


this is just one of the ways it went (tell me another)

by theappleppielifestyle



Series: Through Worlds [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, I'M SORRY OKAY I GAVE IN, M/M, Multiverse, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Slow Burn, mentions of alternate universes, seriously the slowest burn ever, teenage avengers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-01-01 20:30:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She says, “Anyone who says the hero was born in a dank cave in Afghanistan is a fool.”</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Tony tells her he has no idea what she’s talking about. </i></p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Or, the Avengers accidentally form a few years before they were supposed to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Tony wakes up in handcuffs, and that’s- well, that’s a shitty start to anyone’s day, unless the handcuffs come with neon fluff around them.

The ones around Tony’s wrists, however, are depressingly fluff-less, and are instead unforgiving metal and push into Tony’s skin when he struggles against them. He stops after a while, when he feels the metal grow slightly slick with blood.

By then, he’s not sure how long it’s been. He had been groggy upon waking, but that was only for a moment before vanishing too fast for it to be normal- at first he dismissed it as the adrenaline rush, but surely any drug with enough kick to knock him out would have effects that lingered longer than a few seconds.

He goes over the facts: his mouth feels sort of swollen and mothbally, and his wrists are bleeding sluggishly, his arms hurt from where they’re cuffed behind him and his legs are cramping from all the sitting he’s been forced into, but other than that, he’s more or less unharmed.

The room he’s in is about as big as his lounge at home, which is to say about the size of a small warehouse. The windows are blacked out, and the only light he can see are the small rays filtering through the cracks.

And unless Clint got bored with his Biology homework and planned an elaborate prank, Tony’s pretty sure he’s been kidnapped and is being held hostage somewhere. Which _sucks_ , because not only does Tony hate being kidnapped, but he thinks he was supposed to go over to Steve’s house for dinner, and it’s Thursday, which means Sarah’s cooking roast beef. Shit, is it even Thursday anymore? How long was he out?

Case in point: Tony hates being kidnapped. _Hates_ it.

He’s about to vocalize this when the door finally opens and someone walks in, but they- she, it’s a woman, or a very curvy man in a dress- says, “Anthony Stark,” in a voice so absurdly creepy that Tony’s mouth clicks shut on a shiver.

Then he opens it again, forcing a smile, because _yes_ , he’s Anthony fucking Stark, and that comes with smartassery leaking from his pores. “That’d be me. Sorry, did you want something? I’d offer to help, but I’m kind of tied up right now.”

He tries for a depreciating shrug, pulling a ‘what can you do’ face.

The woman is smiling. Has been since she walked in, since before she said his name. It’s nearly as creepy as her voice- she smiles like the women in Roald Dahl’s _The Witches_ , her lips pulling up instead of sideways. She has a pointy kind of smile, and it sets Tony on edge.

Tony clears his throat, trying to rid his mind from the skeevies that her smile- voice- her entire presence, really- has provoked. “Also, I prefer ‘Tony.”

“I am… aware,” the woman says, taking her sweet time to reply. She talks slow, too- almost wondrous, her eyes wandering Tony’s body like a caress. Her lips part over her teeth, and Tony is unnecessarily relieved by the lack of fangs.

She is quiet for a moment after that, gaze on Tony in a way that freaks him out more by the second, and then she adds, “Child,” in a soft murmur, like she’s saying it to herself. “So young,” she continues, weirdly distant, sighing it.

Tony is almost too creeped out by all of this to be indignant. “Hey, I’m sixteen, thank you _very_ much. I can legally drive and everything.”

The smile ticks, and Tony stops himself from visibly recoiling. What the fuck is up with this lady, anyway?

“Apologies,” she says eventually. “I must admit I am slightly starstruck, being confronted with you at last. I always considered myself to be very professional, I thought I’d conduct myself as such were I ever to meet you in this universe.”

That’s enough to make the flicker of fear roar up a bit. Kidnappers, Tony can just about handle. _Crazy_ kidnappers- that’s an entirely different story.

“You’re doing fine,” Tony assures her. He pauses, pretending to think about it, before saying, “I mean, you could’ve put some more thought into accommodation.”

Another smile, and this time Tony swallows. She looks at him like he’s familiar, like he’s an old pet she used to know.

“Again, apologies,” she says, and Tony gets the feeling this is going to be a one-sided conversation in which his input doesn’t matter, “I wish there was another way, truly. I never wished to harm any of you.”

Shit. Tony bites back on the answering rush of adrenaline. _Shit_.

“Any of us,” he repeats, and takes immense pride in how his voice is completely steady.

She nods, regal, a graceful incline of her head. This time, the upturn of her lips is almost sad, along with her eyes, neither of which bode well.

“Any of you,” she says again, all sad smile and sorry eyes. “For many a century, we spent our time weaving your lifelines. It brings me great sadness to bring harm to any Avenger, in any life they lead, and I must- I must admit I am not looking forward to what must follow.”

Tony gropes blindly behind his back for something, anything. A rock, some glass, a bit of paper, fuck, he’ll take a pebble and lob it at her if he has to. “Follow? Nothing has to follow. You could just, y’know, let me go, let _us_ go, and-”

“I cannot.” Sad smile. Sorry eyes. _Wet_ eyes, Tony realises, and hey, at least if he’s going to get brutally slaughtered by a crazy chick, she’s going to feel bad about it.

She turns her head to where she had walked in the room, and Tony looks with her. Suddenly, he can’t see the door, which is stupid, since it was there a minute ago.

He blinks, and- and yeah, yep, definitely a door again, that’s weird, and then the door is opening and light is streaming through and half a dozen men in ancient uniforms are marching in. Ancient as in toga-looking, the kind of things Tony’s seen gods wear in History class.

The marching men stop in an even line in front of the woman, staring straight ahead through their masks.

“Have you accumulated the others,” the woman asks.

The answer is immediate, and in unison. All six men intone, “Only Steven and Natasha, mighty Skuld. We are working on finding the other ones.”

Tony’s hands freeze where they’re scrabbling as discreetly as possible, his heart thudding dangerously hard in his chest and then going in double-time. What the fuck are these crazyball nutcases doing with Steve and Natasha? What could they possibly want with them? Tony- Tony’s rich, he’s heir to a fortune, but Natasha lives rent-free uptown in a dorm with Bucky and Rhodey, and the Rogers family are currently struggling to buy a new washing machine.

 _Crazyball nutcases_ , Tony reminds himself. _Probably no reason other than the crazyball nutness_.

“Bring them here,” the woman instructs.

Again, in practised unison: “Yes, mighty Skuld,” and then they’re turning on their heel and marching out, their feet in perfect time with each other.

Tony waits until the door closes, and then- it doesn’t _vanish_ , because of course it can’t, but he sure as hell can’t see it anymore- before asking, “What are you going to do with us?”

The answer comes from the woman- Skuld’s- turned head, still looking towards the blank wall that used to have a door: “Ritual sacrifice,” she says, and then turns back to Tony, where he’s trying not to let that sink in.

“Not just yet, neverfear,” Skuld continues. The smile is back, sadder than ever, like she really regrets this whole thing. “Of course I will wait until you are all in front of me.”

“How nice of you,” Tony says, his mind racing.

“I will attempt to make it hurt the least amount possible.”

Tony can’t really think up an answer for that, but he wants to keep her talking, so he says, “Mighty Skuld, huh?”

Her head dips. “That is my name.”

“Good to meet you.” Tony grits a smile. “Well, not really, if we’re being honest.”

For a moment, Tony thinks she’s going to laugh. Her lips move like she’s going to, but then she stops, like she’s remembered something to jar the laugh from existence. She begins to bend, and Tony holds back on an instinctive flinch. She seems to notice anyway, and hesitates before bending fully, so she’s eye-to-eye with him.

Her mouth opens. Hovers on the edge of speech for a second. Says, like it pains her to do it, “I do believe this is the first time I have seen you like this. This young, with so much violence already taking hold.”

The corner of her mouth wobbles, and for a terrifying second, Tony thinks she’s going to start crying. She doesn’t, though, and her voice stays steady, calm and crisp as she says, “I do apologize for that.”

“How else do you see me,” Tony asks, scrabbling for anything to make her keep talking, give him time to stall, or by some miracle find something behind him to use against her.

“Older,” she answers, and Tony’s fingers grapple uselessly with empty dirt behind him. “Often much older. Sometimes you manage to become Iron Man in your early twenties, even your late teens, but that is very rare. Usually it starts in your mid to late thirties, when life has already gotten its hooks firmly into you.”

Something in that makes Tony stop, but he goes instantly to shove it back. _Crazy_ , Tony reminds himself. _She’s batshit insane. Batshit insane with a cult behind her, or something_.

“It is good, though,” she goes on. “To see you as you are here. Though I have always found it to be quite… melancholy, to find you at this age, with so much you have yet to know, so much pain ahead of you. Not that you’ll experience it now.”

“I don’t know,” Tony says. “Ritual sacrifice doesn’t sound so pain-free.”

“You have been through much worse, believe me, young Anthony,” she murmurs. “So much worse, a million times over. So much suffering.”

“So what, you’re freeing me from that?” Tony’s fingers are bleeding, he’s pretty sure. They’re scraped raw. They feel that way, anyway. “Saving me from what I’d have to go through otherwise?”

Skuld frowns for the first time since Tony woke up, and her lips go straight down instead of outwards. Fuck. “In some worlds, you would consider it a kindness. Have you not been dreaming of the grievances that you have had to experience in other worlds?”

 _Crazy_ , Tony thinks to himself. He forces it again, _crazy crazy crazy, batshit, crazy as fuckballs,_ because he hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in a long time, and he _remembers_.

It’s just snippets- his hands, older and more scarred, fiddling at a bench over the skeleton of a metal suit. The sky screaming past him at full speed. Skinny, steady hands inside his bloody chest, lining it with metal. Cameras going off. Martinis blurring together.

Clint, older, pulling back a bow with red-stained fingers. A green smear in the distance getting closer, and for some reason Tony knows it’s Bruce, and he knows to give orders over his shoulder for everyone to evacuate, now.

A woman named Pepper Potts, a woman who Tony loves so much it aches, a woman who wears makeup to cover her freckles and screams at Tony when he’s being an idiot, a woman who Tony wakes up missing too often.

And Steve. Steve, only a few years older, with a shoulder span that would put Bucky to shame. Steve, bright and bold and brilliant as ever, but bigger than Tony knows him to be.

Steve yelling at him in the stairwell of the Avengers Tower, Steve yelling at him through the comm, Steve yelling at him in the pauses between biting kisses after a mission, Steve yelling at him in the workshop with a hand on his shoulder, Steve yelling at him in a meeting with a fast-healing black eye from the most recent villain of the week.

“World,” Skuld corrects herself, reading Tony’s sharp inhale correctly. “It is often so. Too many worlds would be too hard on even your brain. The world you are getting flashes of in your sleep is the one closest to yours.”

Tony stares. Stares at the mouth which turns all the wrong ways. “Why,” he says, and has to swallow, hard, shaky. “What’s with the ritual sacrifice?”

“You are not supposed to experience leakage from other universes,” Skuld answers. “This is dangerous. All universes are now falling apart, however slowly, and my sisters and I believe we have located the source.”

“None of us did anything, none of us ever-”

“You are innocent,” Skuld agrees. “I know. Unfortunately, this universe is parallel with several others that are far from it, and although I had originally been planning to do this in one of them, my powers have become- limited, shall we say. And a seventeen year old group of Avengers are better than none at all. Souls are souls.”

“Souls are souls,” Tony croaks. “Right. And, and we’re-”

“You are,” Skuld nods.

The door opens then, appearing in the wall and then swinging, and in marches six men and an unconscious Steve in one of their arms, and Tony’s chest constricts. Fuck. Fucking _fuck_.

They deposit a handcuffed and lightly beat-up Steve onto the ground beside Tony, and Tony drinks in the sight like a lifeline, looking for any signs that the damage is anything worse than it seems. His chest rises and falls, slow and steady, which is what Tony’s focusing on the most.

The men tell Skuld that Natasha is proving difficult, and that they will return with her posthaste. They actually use the word, and not ironically, and then leave, the door disappearing behind them.

Tony is so screwed.

He watches, eyes stuck solid on Skuld’s hand as she reaches into her dress- togas have pockets, who knew- and draws out a short, curved dagger, the kind that Tony’s only seen on TV. It’s thick, with jewels encrusted on the blade, the hilt thinning where Skuld holds it.

“Again, apologies,” Skuld tells him with a sigh. “We seem to have less time than I previously thought. I shall have to make do with killing you separately.”

Tony chokes on his own spit.

Skuld raises the dagger, and in the split second that it hovers, Tony realizes where it’s aiming, and shoves in the way just in time so that instead of splitting Steve’s throat, it sinks into Tony’s left shoulder.

Tony screams. He’s never made a sound like that before, not that he’s aware of, and it’s ugly and desperate as it tears out his throat. The pain- _god_. God, Jesus, Mary and everyone else.

He makes a tiny noise, not a sob but not much else, when the knife moves in his shoulder, just a bit.

When he looks up, Skuld is staring at him. She stares for a long time, her eyes full of something Tony hasn’t seen in anyone’s eyes before and probably never will again. Her hand is still clutching the hilt of the knife that is piercing the meat of Tony’s shoulder.

She says, “Anyone who says the hero was born in a dank cave in Afghanistan is a fool.”

Tony tells her he has no idea what she’s talking about, all the while remembering waking up last night from a dream about lighting the arc reactor up for the first time, how it was the brightest thing he had seen in weeks. In the dream, Tony had thought it was the brightest thing he had seen in his life.

Then, though, Skuld puts that idea to bed.

At first, when the glow starts, Tony thinks he’s just delirious from the pain. But then the glow deepens, starts to spread out from her chest and continuing out, out, out, until it’s brimming under her skin.

“I- what,” Skuld gasps. The dark cave of her mouth is starting to shine. Her eye sockets are pits of light. “What did- sisters, I am completing the ritual-”

Her voice cuts off, and she screams, louder than Tony, louder than Tony’s heard anyone scream, and it’s enough for him to flinch violently backwards, crying out in pain when it jolts the knife in his shoulder that Skuld is no longer holding.

“Sisters,” Skuld sobs, and Tony has to squeeze his eyes shut against the light, but it shines through his eyelids.

When the light finally dims, Tony opens his eyes and his handcuffs are gone, the door is open and the only people in the room are him and Steve.

 

 

 

The door is open.

Tony thinks this is a very important point.

The door is open, and there’s light behind it, and Tony would really like to get to wherever the hell the door leads to, because anything is better than staying here and hoping that the men have also fizzled out into whatever happened to Skuld.

First thing, he checks Steve’s pulse on his handcuff-less wrist, which is harder than it seems, regardless of what movies have taught him. Then he slaps Steve’s face, lightly at first, then increasing in hardness until he gives up.

“Steve,” he tries. “Steve! Now is seriously not the time for a nap! Wakey-wakey!”

Nothing.

He shakes Steve as much as he can without dislodging Steve’s arms from their sockets.

Next, he deliberates pulling the knife out of his shoulder, before deciding that it’s ultimately a horrible idea and would most likely end with him bleeding out all over the floor and leaving Steve to fend for himself. Which would suck.

 He attempts to drag Steve towards the door, which proves fruitless, due to the fact that Tony can’t move his left arm without inflicting immense pain on himself. He tries using just his right arm, pushing it under Steve’s armpits and holding him awkwardly to his chest as he half-carries, half-drags Steve to the door in very, very slow increments.

Also, he keeps dropping him. Because Steve isn’t exactly heavy, but neither is Tony, and he’s in pain and the grip is awkward and the blood makes everything slippery.

After the sixth time that Steve slips from Tony’s grasp to the floor, Tony gets down on his knees next to him. “Steve,” he says. “Steve. Steve, Steven, wake the fuck up, come _on_ , please. Pretty please? For me?”

He looks Steve up and down. “God, you are going to have so many bruises from where I keep dropping you,” he realizes aloud. “Shit. Sorry. But in my defence, you’re incredibly uncooperative and also you bruise like a peach, so that’s only half my fault-”

“Wh’izzit,” Steve says from the floor, and Tony jumps, and then hisses in pain from the motion.

“Fuck,” Tony says, first about the flare in his shoulder, and then: “Fuck! You’re awake!”

Steve makes a sound like, “Mmf,” as if he’s not happy at all to be awake, his eyelids fluttering open. “Tony? Where- where the heck are we?”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “About that. We seem to have been kidnapped by crazies. Also, said crazies vanished in a burst of light and I don’t know if they’re coming back, so we should get moving.”

“…What.”

Tony helps him stand, and Steve is frowning and muttering as he wobbles to his feet. He rubs a hand over his face- skinny fingers, slim palms, Tony notes, and it’s familiar and heartbreaking all at the same time- before freezing.

“Is that a _knife_ sticking out of your shoulder,” Steve chokes, his eyes wide and appalled.

Tony looks over at the hilt that moves whenever his shoulder does. “Maybe,” he says after a second.

“Why is there a _knife_ , oh my god, are you okay-”

“Of course I’m not okay, I’ve been IMPALED, Rogers-”

“What did you _do_ ,” Steve says, despairing, hovering his hands to and then away from the hilt.

“I didn’t do anything! Hey, no, don’t pull it out,” Tony warns, twisting away from where Steve’s hands keep getting too close. “I’ll bleed out and die and that would be really bad because you need someone to carry you when you pass out from running away from crazies for thirty seconds. Speaking of which-”

Tony sticks his good hand into his pocket and comes out with an inhaler, holding it out to Steve, who hesitates before taking it.

“You keep a spare,” Steve says as he pockets it.

Tony has to keep himself from shrugging, with the whole shoulder thing. “Better safe than whatever.”

“I wasn’t going to pull the knife out.”

“I know. Just making sure.”

“They have Nat,” Steve says, and Tony’s smile gutters.

“Yeah, I heard. Hey, Steve?”

“Mm?”

“Have you by any chance been having weirdly vivid dreams about World War Two lately?”

Steve only pauses for a second, but in that second, Tony watches his throat work nervously. Steve is nervous plenty of the time, but mostly he either shoves it down or rides through it and punches the guy in the face anyway.

Steve swallows, and says, “Have you had any dreams about flying around in a metal suit?”

Tony doesn’t know what else he expected. “What the fuck is going on,” he growls, to no-one in particular.

“Dunno.” Steve nods towards the door, a few feet away and casting light. Through it, there’s a hallway, long and twisting. “Should we go find out?”

“After you,” Tony tells him.


	2. Chapter 2

They walk for a good half hour and don’t run into any henchmen, which Tony takes as a plus.

As they walk, they talk about the dreams, comparing details and matching names and joking feebly when the only other option is crying.

They’re in the middle of a discussion over whether or not the hallway they’re walking through is ever going to end or if they’re going to end up as skeletons leaning against the walls when they turn a corner and a figure appears.

Stupidly, Tony’s first thought is to wonder if he should pull the knife from his shoulder and brandish it, but then he matches the face to the body, both of which are bloody.

Steve blanches. “Nat, _Christ_ -”

“None of its mine,” Natasha interrupts, and she raises a shaky hand to wipe some blood from her face. Instead, she ends up smearing it across her cheek, and she draws her hand back to watch it tremble before dropping it.

Tony’s gaze lingers on her wrists, which are marked identically to Tony’s. “The men? Henchmen? Guards, whatever?”

“Dead,” Natasha answers, her eyes distant despite her steady voice. “Very dead. Or, they were, and then they started- glowing. And the ones who I didn’t-” she shudders, and it rocks her entire body back, but then she’s sucking in a breath and steamrolling forwards. “The ones who weren’t already dead-”

“Disappeared,” Tony finishes for her, and she nods, her tongue darting out to wet her lips.

“What’s going on?”

Steve’s fingers lock and unlock around his inhaler. He keeps making movements like he’s going to use it, but then lowers it. “We’re working on it,” he says. “So, it’s- us? Just the three of us in here?”

“The crazies said they were going to get Clint, Bruce and Thor.” Tony pauses, biting hard on his cheek to distract himself from the pain in his shoulder, which, if anything, is only getting more persistent. “Here’s to hoping the whole light show thing happened to them, too.”

Natasha nods, her head bobbing quick and short. “We need to get out of here.”

“Where’s _here_ ,” Steve says. He waves a hand. Behind and in front of them, all they can see is hallway; no doors lining it. Just a long span of corridor, spanning off into the distance, with multiple corridors spidering out from it.

Tony looks Natasha up and down, flickering over her and taking in the shaking, the stained clothes, the sweat drying in her hair. “Nat?”

She turns to him in an uneven jerk, her eyes glassy.

 _Shock_ , Tony thinks.

“Have you, uh. Been having dreams about being a super terrifying spy assassin?”

That gets him a wrinkled brow, but not too deep a wrinkle, like she’s confused, but only because she thinks she should be, so Tony continues to the both of them, “The lead crazy said something about the multiverse.”

“Multiverse,” Steve tests it out in his mouth, rolling it over like a boiled sweet. “What’s that?”

Tony says, “It’s a hypothetical theory,” only to be cut off by Natasha, who says, “It suggests we’re one universe in a set of infinite possible universes.”

To Tony’s raised eyebrows, she quirks her mouth. “I actually pay attention in Philosophy, Tony. God knows where you learned that.”

“Parallel universes,” Steve says.

“Alternate realities,” Tony corrects him, squinting over Natasha’s shoulder momentarily to see if the door he thought he had seen was a trick of the light or not. “Nat, which direction did you come from?”

Natasha points towards a corridor about ten feet away, and they start towards it.

They’re not going particularly fast, but it’s faster than usual, and Steve is doing that thing where he pretends he’s not breathing heavily and tries to be all subtle about using his inhaler. He covers it with his hand when he uses it, like that will cancel out the noise.

“So, you’re saying that in another universe, we’re superheroes,” Steve says, and scoffs it a little.

Tony eyes his chest suspiciously, how it isn’t heaving only because Steve is struggling to hold it back. “It’s a possibility.”

“Yeah, but _superheroes_?” Steve’s laugh has a desperate edge to it. “Alternate universes- realities, whatever- it’s a lot to swallow.”

It takes a lot of effort for Tony not to shrug. “I’m not saying we should all run out and buy tights, but since we’ve all been having linked dreams, Nat and I witnessed people vanishing into mid air after she was able to successfully take down several grown men, and we’re currently walking down the neverending hallway, so I’d say alternate realities are our best bet right now. How’d you do that, anyway?”

He directs the last part to Natasha, who has a knife-free shoulder and is able to shrug as she pleases. But it’s a quick, awkward shrug, and Natasha’s eyes go glazed again for a second.

“I had a complicated childhood,” she says. Then, after a pause: “In Russia.”

She doesn’t look at either of them, and Steve and Tony share a glance as it clicks into place.

“I guess this universe isn’t so different after all,” Natasha murmurs. “Except I got out of it when the other me didn’t.”

 

 

 

 

 

They walk for another half hour, and then another, choosing random hallways to go down and never ending up somewhere that looks different from the place they left. Every hallway looks identical. Every corner turned reveals the same sight.

Tony’s shoulder is a continuous ache, and now he’s getting hungry.

“What happens if we need to take a leak,” he asks.

Steve snorts. “At least then we’ll know if we’re going in circles by the yellow stain on the wall. Hey, that’s not a bad idea.”

“I’m not peeing on the wall,” Tony says.

“No-one’s peeing on the wall,” Natasha says from in front of them.

Tony makes a face. “Well, if _you_ did it, I might be impressed.”         

She turns just enough to flash him a severely unimpressed look, and Tony experiences an unexpected twang in his chest, remembering another redhead who always looks at him with that level of exasperation. Except apparently she doesn’t exist in this universe, and if she does, she doesn’t know Tony yet.

And _that_ gets him wondering about Peggy, and whether she was born in the 30s or is rosy-cheeked and smooth-skinned right now, maybe waking up confused from flashes of a life she never lead. Which then gets him thinking about Steve and Peggy, and whether or not Steve would still kiss Tony the way he did in the other universe if Peggy was here this time around.

But that makes his brain hurt, and also his chest, and his shoulder hurts enough for both of them put together, so he shoves it out of his mind and clears his throat. “Does anyone know where we’re going, or are we wandering aimlessly?”

“Of course we don’t know where we’re going,” Natasha says, and looks like she’s going to continue, but something flickers across her face at the same time as Tony feels a sudden surge of _wrong_. Looking over at Steve, who is wearing the same expression, Tony opens his mouth to ask, _what the hell_.

Natasha cuts him off again. “Except we do, and we’re there,” she says, sounding as confused as Tony and Steve both look, and in front of them, where they’ve been walking towards for the better part of two hours, is a door.

Tony is stuck between asking _how did we not know we were coming here as we knew we were coming here_ , and _okay, seriously, what the everloving fuck_ , but decides against both of them.

“O…kay,” Steve says slowly. His thumb flicks over the plastic of his inhaler, which is rubbed wet with sweat from his palms. “Do we go in?”

Natasha is staring at the knob. “Seems like we should, since we walked all this way.”

“Uh-huh,” Tony says. “And if it’s a trap and a dozen crazies are waiting to ambush us, you’ll take care of it, right?”

She glares at him, and Tony raises his hands. “Okay, okay, sorry.”

“I say we go in,” Natasha says, still glaring, but the heat in it peters off as she says, “Tony?”

Tony is halfway through folding his arms when he changes his mind and unfolds them. “Since the other option is wandering aimlessly through the hallway out of horror movies, sure.”

“Steve?” Natasha hesitates. “Cap? What do you think?”

Steve’s eyebrows raise at the two pairs of eyes that are now directed at him. “Oh, no, I’m not him,” he says, and laughs again, a small, desperate thing. “I’m not- no, I’m not Cap, I’m not _him_ ,” he insists. “I fall over after running a block. I catch a cold and I’m off my feet for weeks. I’m no Captain America, I’m just-”

Tony locks his jaw against the sudden influx of anger that glares in his gut. “Excuse me, no, you’re not _just_ anything,” he snaps, effectively stopping Steve in his tracks. “I’m sorry, Steve, but that’s bullshit. You’re Cap, with or without the serum. You’ve been Cap for us since we were eleven, who cares if you have twigs for bones and cough blood if you go for a jog?”

“Tony-”

“Steve,” Tony mimics, and _god_ , he’s annoyed, he’s more pissed off than he’s been in a while, and maybe some of it is borrowed anger, but whatever. “What, you think Iron Man stops being Iron Man when he doesn’t have the suit?”

Steve’s face sets angrily. “Of course not-”

“Clint isn’t Hawkeye without the bow?”

“No, I-”

“We’re younger, we haven’t- been through certain things yet,” Tony allows. “But we’re- we’re _them_ , Steve. Just on a different timeline and with less baggage. And you’re Captain freaking America, serum or not, and you’re the one who calls the final shots, so are we opening the door or not?”

Steve gives him a look he’s gotten a number of times before, and Tony remembers that same look on a man with a heavier jawline and a shield strapped to his back. Remembers memories that haven’t happened where Steve gave him that look before countless missions, or in the middle of an argument, or when Tony won’t come to bed.

 _Do you remember,_ Tony doesn’t ask, and remembers the soft, familiar press of Steve’s mouth as he tries not to wonder if Steve has had _those_ dreams yet.

“We’re opening the door,” Steve sighs, in the tone that means _you’re so goddamn stubborn_ , and Tony very nearly laughs.

Natasha gives a curt nod, and her hand goes out for the doorknob. She turns it, and the door opens, and they all step inside one by one into a room where the only light is the blue cube hovering in the middle of it.

Something washes over Tony like a tsunami, and suddenly, Tony stops thinking about Steve and his mouth.

Stops thinking about traps.

Stops thinking about the pain in his shoulder.

Stops thinking about much at all except the cube, hovering, rotating slowly and casting blue light.

There’s a silence that lasts for so long Tony forgets about time momentarily, but then he feels a hand grab his arm and the haze thins, just a bit. He looks at the hand, then the arm attached to it, then up to Steve’s face.

“Don’t,” Steve says, sounding like it’s a hand-over-hand struggle to say it, and Tony hears it from a long way away.

He pulls distantly against the grip. “I need- I need to touch it.”

“Don’t,” Steve says again, his face contorted in what looks like pain. “It’s- it’s not- don’t,” he finishes lamely, eyes on Tony in a way that makes Tony remember worlds that haven’t existed yet.

And there’s a pause where they look at each other, and Tony is only vaguely aware of the cube, vaguely aware of the hand tightening around his wrist, both of them pulling hard enough for Tony to become dizzy.

He’s still yanking on the grip, and Steve is jerking him backwards, despite the fact that Tony’s been able to take him in a wrestling match since seventh grade, and Tony’s babbling things he doesn’t even know he’s saying, pleading with Steve to just let him touch it, he needs to, _please_.

Steve says no, and keeps saying no, and every time it looks like it hurts him even more than the last one did, and when he finally, _finally_ looks anywhere other than Tony, it’s because Natasha has stumbled against the wall.

The stumble makes Tony glance, heavy-lidded, towards Natasha, who is too far away and had tripped over her own feet in her attempt to get closer to the cube. Her eyes are glowing faintly, just enough for it to be more than the reflection of the cube.

 _Tesseract_ , Tony’s mind supplies distantly, his head full of memories that aren’t his. He hears himself say, “Nat, don’t,” and manages to rip himself out of Steve’s grasp, due to Steve’s fingers going limp.

Steve staggers forwards, but Tony doesn’t know if it’s towards him, Natasha or the cube, and for a while he doesn’t care as he half-wobbles, half-runs on unsteady feet towards Natasha, who has her hand stretched out.

He feels drunk. He feels numb, stupid, his brain won’t work right, his breathing is uneven and his legs won’t cooperate and he doesn’t knock Natasha out of the way rather than he falls against her, dragging her down with him.

As he does, he watches the trigger-fast graze of Natasha’s outstretched fingers as they brush the cube, watches his own elbow knock against it at the same time, and then-

And then-

God. Oh, _god_.

 

 

 

 

Almost a mile away, Clint Barton wakes up with a jolt in the bedroom of his sixth foster home in ten years.

Adrenaline is going crazy in his bloodstream, and he immediately tries to shove himself off the floor, only for his arms to give way and send him right back down with a _thump_ as his chin hits the wood.

He gives himself a second to absorb everything before he realizes he’s shaking, and after that he lies there for a few minutes, his mind reeling.

“Fuck,” he says after what he thinks must be the three-minute mark. “ _Fuck_.” It’s shaky, and his voice breaks in a way it hasn’t in years, and it’s mostly muffled due to his lips being pressed awkwardly into the floor.

He breathes raggedly, letting himself shake for a while longer, before pushing himself up again on locked elbows. This time, he makes it to his feet.

First, he checks the clock: he had only been out for a minute, maybe less, if he takes away the shivering-on-the-floor factor. He pats himself down for injuries he might have gotten when he slumped off his bed onto his bedroom floor, but other than an aching jaw from muttering swear words into hardwood, he’s pretty much unharmed.

He drags his drawers out fully, dumping them on the floor in his haste to get to his clothes, which he now has enough of to fill up an entire drawer. Lucky him.

His shirts all go into his duffel, along with his jeans, which he really needed to replace, but he supposes he isn’t going to get a chance now. Next is his money, which he keeps in a hole behind his bedside table.

A splinter breaks off in his finger as he’s pulling it out, and he yanks it back to hiss, “Fuck,” for what has to be too many times in the last ten minutes, even for him. He eases it out with his teeth, grabs his money, which is secured in a rubber band, and stuffs it deep into his duffel.

“This is so fucked up,” he announces to his empty room, and sucks on his finger briefly before zipping his duffel shut.

He has one leg out the window, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, when his step-sister, Kate Bishop, walks past his door- his _open_ door, Jesus, he’s an idiot- in the middle of taking a swig from a bottle of Skyy vodka.

They both freeze, Clint in mid-escape, Kate in mid-sip, and for a second they stare at each other, deer-in-the-headlights style.

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Clint says finally, and Kate licks her lips, coughs, and then licks her lips again. Clint doesn’t blame her. Vodka straight from the bottle at age 14 was never very pleasant.

“Deal,” she says. She cocks her head at his escape attempt. “Where are you going?”

“Vegas.”

“Ha, ha.”

“My friends need my help,” Clint admits. Kate’s cool, he’s come to realize over the months he’s spent here. He thinks he can trust her. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, just- tell Jenny I’ll be back when I get back, okay?”

She rolls her eyes, but says, “Sure.”

Clint says, “Thanks,” and is nearly fully out the window, perching when Kate asks, “Do you owe people money?”

“No.”

The bottle dangles from her hand. “Is it the mob?”

“The m-? No, Jesus, Kate, it’s not the _mob_. My friends need my help, is all. They’re in trouble. Also- also me, I think. I don’t know. Hey, Katie?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Try to stay on the down-low for a while, okay?”

Kate says, “Uh-huh,” less sure this time, a frown forming. She takes a step forwards, and then thinks better of it, stopping where she is. “Clint, are you okay?”

“I’m great."

"Will you be here for school after break ends?"

Clint hesitates. "Dunno," he says honestly. "Bye.”

“Bye,” Kate says, sounding more uncertain than ever. “Hey, Clint?”

Clint stops just short of falling out the window. “Yeah?”

Kate folds her arms, the vodka bottle pressing hard into them. “My mom’s name is Lolita,” she tells him. “Not Jenny.”

Clint winces. Too many foster homes, too many foster moms. At least he managed to get Kate’s name right, the brat. “Right,” he says. “Sorry. Bye.”

“Bye,” Kate says again, and this time she doesn’t continue, and Clint lets himself drop the several feet to the ground.

 

 

 

 

Thor wakes up to his father slapping his cheek and his mother halfway through dialling 9-1-1 on her cellphone.

“I am fine,” he croaks instantly, holding a hand- trembling- out to his mother, whose fingers stop in mid-motion when she sees he’s awake.

His father’s relief is heavy on his face. “You passed out in the middle of tennis.”

 _Tennis_. Yes. Thor remembers tennis. He remembers his fingers loosening on his racquet, his vision suddenly sliding sideways, giving way to another world, another life, and then something in his head burst with pain and then everything went dark.

Thor remembers tennis. It seems laughable, compared to what else he remembers.

“I am fine,” he repeats, sitting up with the help of both his parents, who hover worryingly over him. He swallows. “I- mother, father, I have something I must say.”

Neither of his parents look eased by this, but his mother says, “Of course.”

“I- regret to say I have forgotten to tell you of the road trip I had planned weeks ago with my friends, for the last week of spring break. I am leaving today. I apologize for not telling you sooner, it- slipped my mind.”

“Thor,” his mother says, looking at him like he’s grown another head, “You just passed out on the tennis court. We are not letting you go anywhere until you are checked out by a doctor. Tell him, Odin.”

Odin says, “You,” and that’s as far as he gets before Thor is talking over him.

“It was the heat,” Thor tells them. “The heat, nothing more. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go and pack before they arrive.”

They both call after him as they leave, but Thor hardly hears them over his racing heart, the blood pounding, deafening, in his ears. He makes it up the stairs before realizing he’s heading to his brother’s room instead of his, and wastes no time knocking on the door.

It takes a few seconds, but then his brother- his _brother_ , Loki, who is wearing his stupid, oversized headphones and uses too much conditioner and is young and innocent and completely unaware of what Thor has seen him done in another world- is opening the door. He looks bored, but when he focuses on Thor’s face, his brow creases in concern.

“Brother, are you oka-”

Thor’s punch startles the both of them.

Loki reels, his shoulder catching on the door, his eyes wide and shocked. This is nothing like the playful wrestling they had participated in as brothers; instead it bloodies the side of Loki’s mouth and makes him gape.

Then Thor is thundering forwards, and despite the punch, Loki doesn’t even flinch when Thor locks his arms around him and hugs him fiercely.

“What the _hell_ , you oaf, what is _wrong_ with you,” Loki is spluttering, but his arms come around Thor and he’s hugging back, however confused.

His confusion only increases when Thor pulls back and grabs his face with both hands.

“Promise me,” Thor says, his voice too raw. “Promise me, brother-”

“Okay, fine, I promise, what are you _doing_ -”

“-that no matter what you find out, you will do nothing rash.”

Loki blinks at him. Considers punching him back. Blinks at him some more.

“Fine,” he says finally, and is only mildly surprised when he is yanked into a hug once again.

 

 

 

 

 

Tony wakes up with a rattling gasp, sucking in breaths in a way similar to a panic attack. “The _fuck_ ,” he demands, and it comes out wheezed, cracking on the end of the last word.

Near him, Steve says, “Yeah.”

“But,” Tony says.

“Yeah,” Steve replies.

They help each other up, grabbing an unresponsive Natasha’s arm who stands with only minimal trouble.

“The FUCK,” Tony says, louder.

“Yeah,” Steve nods. His hands shake around Natasha’s shoulders. “Let’s go.”

Tony doesn’t think Steve is getting the enormity of this. “But what the FUCK-”

“I know,” Steve snaps at him. “Let’s _go_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sigh. Plot.


	3. Chapter 3

Their escape is postponed briefly, due to Natasha, who gets on all fours and vomits for a couple of minutes until she’s dry-heaving.

Tony pets her back awkwardly and stops when she glares, and then they’re helping her to her unsteady feet.

“Walk,” Natasha croaks, and points, and they start in that direction. It proves fruitless for a good five minutes, and then there’s suddenly a dead end and a door.

They stare at it, then at each other, with varying levels of enthusiasm. The door looks normal, but after everything that’s happened in the last hour, none of them are willing to plunge straight in.

“Or we could wander around hopelessly until we die of starvation,” Steve says, an answer to a question no-one asked, but both Natasha and Tony nod, though Tony far more reluctantly.

Natasha glares even harder when Tony tells her ‘ladies first’ and nudges her in front of him.

“Baby,” she tells him.

“Hoping to live past the next twenty seconds,” Tony answers blandly.

With an eyeroll that she pulls to distract herself from her shaking hand, Natasha reaches out, grabbing the doorknob and pulling it open in one swift movement, her tenseness not lessening when all she sees is a parking lot. She peers out, surveying the concrete, watching the rooftops, before Steve blurts, “That’s my car.”

She follows his eyes, and yes, there’s Steve’s crappy minivan on the other side of the parking lot. Its bad paint job is the most comforting thing Natasha’s seen all night. A lot more comforting, at least, than the fact that the doorway they’re standing in seems to be detached from anything in the parking lot. From what Natasha can see by craning her head out the door, the door seems to be just that- a door, and nothing else, with no apparent building or hallway to speak of, nevermind the hallway they’re currently standing in.

“This is the parking lot outside the bowling alley,” Tony says, looking over Natasha’s head by standing on his toes. “What the hell were you doing at the bowling alley?”

“I wasn’t. Or, I think I didn’t. The last thing I remember is telling my mom I was going out.”

“Right.” Tony blinks at the car, which is way too far away.

“Let’s go,” Natasha says, and only hesitates briefly before stepping out the door and onto the concrete of the parking lot. Nothing happens, so she takes another step, Tony and Steve following behind her step by step, all of them glancing back until Natasha looks back and the door is gone.

They trade another look, and Tony opens his mouth, but Natasha tells him to shut up and it snaps closed.

“Car,” Steve says.

“Car,” Natasha agrees.

“Car, holy shit, I’ve never been more relieved to see your shitty paint job, Bessie.”

Steve frowns at Tony over his shoulder as they walk. “Bessie’s paint job isn’t shitty.”

“Okay,” Tony says, clearly at the point to agree with anything as long as he’s allowed in the car.

When they get to the side of the parking lot Steve’s minivan is in, the keys are in the ignition. Natasha supposes they shouldn’t expect anything else.

 

 

 

The first stop they make is at the Rogers’ apartment. They climb the stairs, rickety and metal and probably a health violation, to the door and let themselves in without having to unlock it.

Sarah Rogers starts talking as soon as the door opens. “Where the hell have you been, it’s nine PM, you never answered my-” she stops, mouth dropping into a slack ‘O’ when she sees Tony’s arm, and the knife sticking out of it.

“Ma,” Steve says, hands raised. “I’m so, so sorry for not calling you back, and I’m so sorry for springing this on you at the last minute, but we need you to stitch Tony up and then we need to get out of here.”

“Where are you going? Why can’t you take Tony to a hospital, oh my god, that might need surgery-”

“It doesn’t,” Tony cuts in. “Shallow blade.”

“Who did this to you? Are the two of you okay?” Sarah stalks forwards, taking Steve’s face in her hands and twisting gently to see him from all angles, ignoring his protests, giving him a brief pat over his arms and torso, and then doing the same to Natasha.

“We’re fine,” Steve sighs. “Really, Ma, we’re-”

“You’re obviously _not_ fine, Steven, if you have to leave town.” She pauses, fingers on Tony’s arm but a safe length away from the blade. “Was it the mob?”

“The mob,” Steve repeats dumbly. “Ma, do you think _I_ would get into the mob?”

Sarah shrugs, worrying eyes on Tony’s wound. “You might have seen something. Did you see something?”

“No, we didn’t see anything, we just need to- leave. As soon as possible. And, and could you lie low for a bit? Just- not talk about me to anyone?”

Steve’s stomach is heavy as his mother looks him over, lips thin, face pinched in a way that he gets when he’s really sick. He’s sweating; he’s been using his inhaler too many times for the past few hours, and he wishes like hell he could just go up to his room and collapse into bed and wake up and have breakfast with his damn mother, but he knows full well he can’t; knows what might happen if he does.

“What about school,” she says eventually. "Will you be back for the start of the year next week?"

"We'll- get back to you on that."

"You don’t want me to go to the police."

“God, no. No. You can’t. That will just- that might get people hurt.”

Sarah's lips purse. “Are the police in on it?”

“No! It’s- it’s not, it’s not a mob thing, it’s not a conspiracy thing, it’s- really hard to explain, and you wouldn’t believe me if-”

“Try me.”

God help him, Steve almost does. Almost opens his mouth and says, _Ma, in another world, we’re superheroes, and now something is coming after us because of it._ But at the last second, when his mouth opens, Tony elbows him, hard, and Steve looks at him and realizes with a sinking feeling that it would only make things worse.

“Ow,” Steve says instead. Then, to his Ma's steely eyes, which have always been too much like his own, “I can’t. At least, I can’t now. But we will,” and on this he checks with Tony and Natasha, who don’t say anything but don’t shake their heads, either, so Steve assumes they’ll discuss it later, after everything’s been sorted out. “When we’re sure it’s safe.”

Sarah’s gaze travels over the three of them, her arms coming to cross over her chest. Finally, she breathes out hard through her nose and says, “Fine,” and Steve’s shoulders sag.

“Thank you.”

“Not a problem.” She tugs on Tony’s good shoulder. “Come on, Tony, let’s get you up on the counter so I can get some light on that shoulder.”

Steve excuses himself to pack before going up the stairs, leaving Sarah, Natasha and Tony all in the tiny lounge which turns into a kitchen halfway through. Natasha sits on a loveseat and Tony sits on the bench.

“This is going to hurt,” Sarah tells him, hand steady around the hilt of the knife in his shoulder. “I’m going to do it as fast as possible, and then staunch the bleeding. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be all that bad, but you really should go and get it checked out-”

“Later,” Tony assures her with a flimsy smile. “Another town. Please just do it.”

“Okay.” The hand tightens. “Ready?”

He braces himself for it, fingers tightening around the edge of the counter. “Just do it.”

Sarah complies, and Tony tries all too late to muffle the yell that leaves him. The pain is sharp, flaring, and he bites down on his lip hard enough to taste blood. It makes him remember the other times he’s felt like this, felt all this pain light him up in the worst ways, and for a moment he remembers a man rooting around in his bloody chest before jerking himself out of it.

 _Not my memories,_ he reminds himself. _Not mine, not mine, he’s not me._

He hears a voice say his name, and on the second go he manages to reply. “Yeah, yeah, I’m good. Mother _fuck_ , that hurts.”

It might be the first time Sarah Rogers hasn’t berated him for swearing. He kind of misses it. He doesn’t know when the next time is going to be, or even if there is going to be a next time.

Like she read his mind, Sarah asks, “How long?”

“We don’t know,” Tony says, at the same time Natasha says from the loveseat which she’s pulled up close to the counter, “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

Sarah hums. “I hope you know how much restraint this is taking for me, not calling the police to help with whatever’s happened.”

“Sorry.”

“I trust you,” she says, and her fingers pause where they’re stitching Tony up. “Is it just you three?”

“No,” Natasha answers. “Thor’s involved. And Clint Barton. Bruce, too.”

“The whole gang’s in trouble, huh? Where are they?”

“We’re picking them up after we’re done here.”

Sarah nods. “You all take care of each other, you hear me?”

Tony’s really going to miss this apartment, he realizes. He’s going to miss the pull-out couch and Steve’s small, cramped room upstairs and the shower that doesn’t have hot water unless you push on the dial while you shower. He squints down at Sarah under the too-bright light she has shoved at him and says, “Yes, ma’am,” in unison with Natasha, who sounds like she’s smiling.

 

 

 

The trip to Tony’s house is considerably worse.

Tony grabs a suitcase and fills it with what he thinks he’ll have to use, and figures he can buy whatever he needs if he forgets anything. When he gets downstairs, his mother is standing there, which is weird enough.

What’s even weirder is her telling Tony that Steve has explained the situation, that she expects him to call her occasionally to tell them when he’s coming back, and also that Steve has asked him to wait until he gets back and then they can leave.

Tony stares at his mother, puzzled. He doesn’t remember the last time she’s said that much to him since the Dublin Fiasco of ’04.

“Uh,” he says. “Sure. Where is he?”

“Running an errand,” Maria Stark answers distantly.

Tony stands there with his suitcase, his arm hurting like a bitch and the pain pills finally kicking in, for about thirty seconds before Steve comes in, walking very fast.

Tony turns to leave, but Steve stops in front of Maria and drops something in her waiting hand. Maria closes her hand quickly, but Tony sees a flash of a ring, slightly bloody.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Stark,” Steve says, and he’s out of breath, his hand twitching towards the lump in his pocket that is his inhaler.

To Tony’s surprise, his mother smiles. Like, a smile-smile. Not those fake ones that she pulls at dinner parties and galas, the ones that Tony has learned to imitate almost perfectly in the mirror now. She smiles, and says, “Likewise, Steven. Come over anytime after you get back.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Steve wheezes.

Tony watches this strange exchange wordlessly as his mother looks over her shoulder, pats Steve lightly on the back and says, “Ah, better get going before security works out where you ran off to.”

“Right,” Steve says, and Tony says, “Hey, whoa, no, what? Why did you give my Mom her ring back with blood on it? No, why did you borrow it in the first place? What’s security doing-”

“Your friend and I struck up a discussion as he was walking around the house looking for Howard,” Maria interrupts him. “It… went places, and Steve seemed very determined, so I let him wear my ring to cause more permanent damage when he punched my dear husband in the face.”

Again with the genuine smile, directed at Tony this time, her hands folding delicately around the bloody ring. “Off with you, then. Call when you can.”

“Okay,” Tony says dumbly, and is about to say something else when several security guards enter the room running and Steve and Tony have to make a break for it.

They sprint down the hall, Tony dragging a suitcase and a wheezing Steve through a shortcut and then out onto the sprawling backyard, running full pelt in the direction of the car.

From what he can see of Natasha, who is in the driver’s seat, she looks a mix between exasperated and amused. Surprise, Tony thinks, isn’t a big thing today. Yes, we’re running from my home with a hoard of security guards a dozen steps behind us. Yes, I’ve been stabbed in the arm and running hurts so much I think I’m going to cry. But today we’ve also learned we have alternate worlds, so compared to what else we’ve done today, running from security guards with a stab wound is so-so.

This train of thought is punctuated with the burning urge to start giggling very loudly, and by the time they slam the car doors shut behind them and peel wildly out of the driveway, both Tony and Steve are laughing so hard Steve has to give Tony a huff of his inhaler.

The suitcase has been thrown down near their legs, and Natasha shouts over their laughter, “What happened?”

“Steve punched Howard in the face with my Mom’s ring,” Tony manages, a weird mix of pleased and angry and hazy, which he blames on the pain meds.

“Didn’t get to do it in the 40s,” Steve says, grinning that big, goofy smile that never fails to make Tony’s stomach clench. “Figured I might as well do it now.”

Tony shoves him, and then shoves him again so he falls against the window, his voice incredulous now, only half laughing, holding the part of his arm that doesn’t hurt like crazy. “You’re such a- you could’ve, he could sue you-”

“You wouldn’t let him.”

“It doesn’t matter if I LET him!”

“Boys,” Natasha says from the front seat, but they ignore her.

“I like your Mom,” Steve says.

Tony stares at him like he’s an insane person.

“She reminds me of you,” Steve continues, and Tony’s look only deepens.

“BOYS,” Natasha says loudly. “My place next?”

“Yeah, your place,” Steve says, waving his right hand at her before wincing. “My hand hurts,” he says, and then Tony’s laughing again, loopy on meds and adrenaline and Steve’s grin, which is fading but is still there.

 

 

 

Bucky and Rhodey, despite being in their first year of college, have been the model flatmates for Natasha. They put the toilet seat down when they’re finished. They pull their weight with the housework. They don’t mention how Natasha had to move away from her foster parents at the age of fifteen last year.

Rhodey and Bucky both frown when Natasha tells them she has to leave for a while.

“How long,” Bucky asks, eyes on Natasha as she grabs her comb from the kitchen table.

“We’ll keep you posted,” she tells him, not looking at him as she rounds up her toiletries, her hidden weapons around the apartment that everyone raises their eyes at but don’t say anything about.

“Right,” Rhodey says. “That’s not ominous. Hey, what happened to Tony’s arm?”

“Bullfight,” Tony answers distractedly. “Nat, did you seriously just pull a butterfly knife out from behind the fridge?”

“Yes,” Natasha says, slotting said knife into her bag. She looks around, daring anyone to ask further. No-one does, so she continues packing. She listens to Bucky and Steve talk in the background, and Tony in a whispered argument with Rhodey about his arm, and zips up her bag with an air of finality that makes them shut up.

“We’ll call when we can,” Natasha tells the both of them, and, before she can lose her nerve- because she’s not a high school kid, was never really a kid after her childhood, just a weapon pretending to be a girl- she stalks forwards, takes James Barnes’ face in her hands and kisses him.

She’s never kissed him before, not in this universe, but she remembers so many others. Kisses hunched down in the snow, desperate last-minute kisses tinged with blood, slow kisses traded in bed. Bucky kisses like she remembers, though his hands on her hips are smoother than she remembers them ever being in any universe where they were weapons together.

There’s a silence when she pulls back, slinging her bag over her shoulder. Bucky blinks several times, eyebrows up, his smile confused.

“Do not,” Natasha says, “Join the army.”

“Wasn’t… planning on it,” Bucky says slowly, head lowered so he can look her in the eye. “Uh. Have a nice trip?”

If she’s being honest, Natasha isn’t sure how to handle this boy, this fresh-into-college boy who’s never fired a gun or pressed his hands to somebody’s throat. But this- this is her Bucky, and that’s got to mean something.

 

 

 

“This is so fucked up,” Clint announces as he gets into the minivan, after stuffing his bag in the trunk.

“We know,” Natasha says, and they pull away from the curb again.

 

 

 

 

Thor gets in in relative silence, and it’s only until they stop at a traffic light until he turns to address the group and says, “Did everyone-?”

“Yes,” they answer in unison, and Thor doesn’t speak again until they reach Bruce’s house.

 

 

 

Clint’s hand is about an inch away from the wood when he hears the yells.

“I told you we should have come here first,” Natasha says, and Tony says something like, “It’s the furthest away,” and Natasha hisses something back in Russian that Clint didn’t know she knew until falling to the floor of his bedroom an hour ago.

To Clint’s left, Thor is shifting nervously. “What do we do?”

“Don’t suppose any of us can knock down a door,” Steve says darkly, and they all stiffen as they hear Brian Banner’s yells get even louder.

“Probably not,” Clint says. “But hey, here’s to trying!”

The first impact hits his shoulder, and he has a burst of pain and of memories that aren’t his-

“Kick it,” he says, and it’s echoed by most of the people around him, and Clint grits his teeth, closing his eyes. He remembers distantly about a fire, the house burning around him, flames falling onto him and searing his shirt, remembers-

He faces away from the door, raises his leg, and shoves back with all his weight against the space just under the lock. Once and it wobbles, twice and it shudders, three times and Thor throwing himself against the wood and the door cracks.

Thor cracks it further, using brunt force to wrestle the wood out of place so they can get through.

Clint struggles through the door, kicking away wood and shouldering his way through before heading with Thor in front to the source of the noise.

The first thing to hit Clint when he enters the room is the yell, and then he ducks from years of practice that he’d rather not think about to avoid the bottle of whiskey that comes sailing at him. Thor’s only glass-free due to Brian Banner being a lousy aim when he’s drunk.

Drunk, and steady enough not to stumble when he walks, and he’s turned from throwing bottles at a cupboard door to lobbing them at Clint and his friends, who are all ducking or stepping out of the way of their trajectory.

Thor gets there first, landing a punch that sends Brian sprawling. He bends down over him, punching him hard enough his head smacks back into the carpet, and it’s only Clint putting a hand on his back that stops another blow from following. Clint feels kind of bad about it. He doesn’t have much of a quarrel with watching Bruce’s dad getting whaled on until he coughs up his teeth.

He turns just in time to see Bruce walk out of the closet, a cut across his forehead but otherwise relatively unharmed. “I’m fine,” he says when Tony asks, and then says it again when Steve chimes in. “I’ll just- I have my bag ready, I’ll go and get it.”

“I’ll come with you,” Tony says, and follows Bruce up the stairs, doing a good job at not wincing when Brian Banner starts yelling again.

“What’re you,” Brian Banner is slurring below Clint. “What’re you- he’s my kid, fuck off, you’re not allowed to take him, I’m family-”

In a swiftness that Clint only recognizes from her, Natasha comes forwards and gets right up in his face. She says something, and it’s in a language Clint doesn’t know, but some other Clint Barton who has stroked Natasha’s hair through her nightmares translates for him:

“ _We’re_ his family.”

 

 

 

They make it to the state line before Thor speaks up.

“I’m aware of our- circumstances- but was it necessary to leave our town entirely? Could we not simply lie low?”

“What, and hope for the best?” Tony snorts. “They’ll come after us, we’re involved now. Apparently.”

Clint props his feet up on the seat in front of him and pretends not to notice it when Natasha elbows his foot. “This is bullshit,” he declares. “Bull. Shit. We’re not superheroes, we’re not anything, I don't know if I'm gonna pass senior year, for fuck sake. I didn’t think I’d have to flee the state until I was in my twenties, at least.”

“Something tells me Doctor Doom or Loki-"

Thor shoots Tony a look and he ignores it, continuing, "-or who the fuck ever aren’t going to take ‘we aren’t anyone’ as an excuse, Barton. We aren’t _them_ , but we are… them. Or, we have the potential.” Tony crosses his arms, and then regrets it when pain flares up. He wishes Steve wasn’t constantly checking Tony wasn’t taking over the recommended dosage. “Anyway, we’re caught in the crossfire, so we’re leading them away. They want us, fine. We can get ready for them. But they aren’t getting our families.”

In the driver’s seat, Steve sighs loudly. “Someone change the subject,” he says. “My day already sucked without this. Say something happy.”

“Any requests,” Bruce asks, busy dabbing antiseptic on his forehead.

Steve nearly growls. “Anything! Shit, just, just say ANYTHING else, I don’t care. Someone say something else.”

The minivan is quiet for a few seconds as looks are traded. Clint twists around in his seatbelt to give considering glances at Bruce and Thor, who look back and shrug.

It’s Tony that starts to hum a tune that is weirdly familiar. He hums, and Steve watches recognition break out on Natasha’s face when she smirks.

It’s not until Tony starts singing halfway through the verse that Steve groans loud enough for Tony to lose track and laugh before continuing.

After that, Clint joins in, and then the rest of them, and Steve starts slapping the headboard as the whole car yells, “WHO’S STRONG AND BRAVE, HERE TO SAVE THE AMERICAN WAAAAAY?”

“Guys,” Steve yells over them.

“WHO VOWS TO FIGHT FOR WHAT’S RIGHT NIGHT AND DAAAAAY?”

“I fucking hate all of you-”

“WHO WILL CAMPAIGN DOOR TO DOOR FOR AMERICA, CA-RRY THE FLAG SHORE TO SHORE TO AMERICA, FROM-” and then there’s a small lapse in the song as everyone forgets the exact wording and mumbles it, which is a luxury Steve can’t afford.

“Hoboken to Spokane,” he says, giving in, and then singing the line pathetically: “From Hoboken to Spokaaaane-”

The whole car bursts in with, “THE STAAAAAAR SPANGLED MAAAAAN WIIIIITH A PLAAAAAAN,” and carries on for a whole half hour before Steve pulls over to halfheartedly beat Tony up for starting it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve has a minivan because it was very, very crappy, but it was free. But don't insult his minivan. He loves his Bessie.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SO SORRY. HOLY SHIT. THE LAST TIME I UPDATED THIS WAS FOREVER AGO. And again, I'm so sorry, but I may abandon this again, and if so then I’m incredibly sorry. Again. I hate it when authors do this, and I know how it feels. 
> 
> Anyway: I edited! If you go back and read the first 3 chapters, I made a change: the avengers are now still in high school, and start their last year in a week.

The song continues in stops and starts for the next several hours, and by the time Steve pulls into a hotel he’s close to begging.

“It’s like- it’s like the most annoying advert in the entire world, but worse,” he tries. “It haunts my nightmares. Guys. Seriously. GUYS. Half the dreams I’ve been having are about the war and the other half is that song over and over again- I had to wear tights- _stop_ it-”

He breaks jerkily and tries not to smile too hard when most of them hit their heads on the headrests in front of them. He dodges when Clint swats at him, laughing, and for a moment he forgets that this isn’t a normal road trip between most of his closest friends the week before senior year starts.

But then his gaze catches on the steering wheel and he remembers learning how to drive in a car that isn’t even made in this decade, all clunky metal and gearshifts and rolling down the window manually, having to hit his palm against the roller when it rusts itself to a stop.

God. _God_. Steve tries to focus on the parking lot, on nudging Bessie into place, but: “It’s like we lived a whole other life,” he blurts, and the laughing around the car dies off.

He swallows, stares at the dashboard. “I remember,” he starts, and then doesn’t know how to finish it: he trails off, startles when Tony touches his wrist. It’s fleeting, a soft squeeze, and Tony lets go as soon as Steve looks over.

When Steve looks at Tony, he’s struck by how young he looks, by the lack of goatee and laugh lines. He looks- wrong, almost.

 _No_ , he tells himself, hands clenching around the steering wheel _. This is the right Tony, this is my- the Tony of my world. My universe. We are not some accidental rip-off of some other universe’s mistake._

Six hours ago, Steve’s biggest worry was whether or not he’d get into art school this year. Now he has a whole other life hiding behind his eyes, smothering him when he least expects it. He has other lives, too- other worlds, but there’s one that’s the clearest, other than this one.

Like many other worlds, the Other World’s Tony touched him- Other Him- like this, too- soft wrist touches, quick ones, like he was afraid Steve would wrench his hand away. But unlike this world, the Other World’s Tony got bolder over the years. He took Steve’s wrist and slid his finger so they were tangled with Steve’s, then he kept his hand there.

Steve’s gaze flickers to Tony’s hands. They’re scarred, but less scarred than Other-Tony’s, who has at least 25 years on him. Steve’s own hands are still clutching the steering wheel. His breathing is getting reedy in a way it hasn’t in years, in the Other World-

“You gonna keep us here all day, Cap,” Tony asks, quiet and steady, eyes on his- brown eyes, like they’ve always been, but for a moment Steve is confused as to why they aren’t blue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It isn’t until they’ve checked into a room- there isn’t one with six beds, but they’re wary about being separated so they took a room with four and then rock-paper-scissored over who got the floor- that they realize they don’t have an actual plan.

“We should definitely have one, right,” Bruce says. “A plan? Yes?”

“Mm,” Steve says, trying to unstick gum from his shoe. He’s scraping it off with his credit card when he looks up and sees everyone looking at him pointedly. “Guys. We’ve been over this.”

“I do not know about you,” Thor says, “but I now remember many things about princehood and the duties it entails. Surely you remember at least some of your training?”

“I- well, yeah,” Steve admits. “A bit. But army training isn’t going to help us here!”

“Okay,” Clint says. Then, slower, when they’ve all turned to look at him: “Okay. SO. Here’s what we know.” He takes a deep breath. “APPARENTLY we’re all supposed to be born different decades and be superheroes and shit. But something fucked up and THIS universe was created right next to it, or alongside it, or whatever, where we were all born in the same year and met when we were 10.”

“11,” Natasha corrects absently.

Clint waves his hand at her, not looking up from the ground. “Whatever. Anyway. No-one knows why this universe is even here at all, or why we’re experiencing universe leakage. ‘Cause we’re a screw-up dimension! And our universe-leakage is causing rips in the spacetime thingy, and other universes are getting all fucked up because of it, so there are a bunch of people coming to kill us ‘cause we’re SCREW UPS.”

He’s giggling by the end of it, his head in his hands. “Oh my goooood what the fucking fuuuuck this is so. Fucked. UP. GUYS. WHAT EVEN. WHAT EVEN, GUYS."

Bruce starts patting him on the back as Clint lets out a long, drawn-out groan. “Deep breaths,” Bruce tells him as Clint gulps air.

“We need a plan,” Tony says.

“We’re a bunch of high schoolers with no experience with this shit,” Clint croaks as Bruce pushes his head between his bent knees, rubbing up and down his spine. “Well. ‘cept Nat, who was a child assassin. Called it. Sorry,” he adds, when she throws him a glare.

“I suppose we just,” Steve says, and then pauses when everyone looks towards him again. He sighs. “Guys, I don’t have a game plan here. If we try to fight- well, whatever comes at us, really- we’re going to get the shit kicked out of us. Except for possibly Natasha. And Clint.”

“Hey,” Clint says weakly. “Sure, I can shoot a bow, but that Other-Me has some serious SHIELD training. Dude’s a ninja.”

Tony crosses his arms. “Do we have SHIELD here?”

“I shall Google it,” Thor says, getting out his phone. “Will they show up even if they truly exist?”

“They didn’t make a secret out of themselves, in the Other World,” Steve points out. “They just- weren’t all too clear on what they did.”

They all wait as Thor types it in. “Sorry, bad service,” Thor says after a moment, and then a grin is spreading across his face. “Well, there is no SHIELD as of yet, but there is a Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

Natasha holds out her hand, scrolling down when Thor gives the phone to her.

“Where’s it based,” Bruce asks.

“Oddly enough, the secret government organisation doesn’t share that information online,” Natasha says. “Secret-ish,” she amends a second later.

“I say we sleep on it,” Clint announces. “The plan. ‘Cause life-shattering revelations make Clint sleepy.”

He gets up, goes to the bathroom and is in the middle of closing the door when he pokes his head out. “Hey, bathroom light’s off.”

“Then change it.”

“Did you bring a lightbulb in your emergency bag, Romanoff?”

“We’ll get lightbulbs in the morning.”

“Great,” Clint sighs. “I’m gonna go take a shit in the dark, then. This should be an adventure!”

The door clicks shut behind him and Steve falls backwards onto his bed, feeling more than a little bit exhausted himself.

A dip in the mattress makes Steve look over. It’s Tony. _Of course it’s Tony_ , some misted-over part of Steve’s brain whispers _, you’re team leaders, you always have these side-meetings after the actual ones-_

 _Shut it_ , he tells the whisper. _You’re not me_.

“I kind of want to see what kind of shit Nat has in her emergency bag,” Tony says.

Steve snorts, rolling his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Honestly? I’m kind of terrified to.”

Tony hums, and Steve feels the bed dip more as Tony shifts up and lies down. “This is fucked up.”

“You’re telling me.”

“This is _insane_.”

“Definitely.”

Tony sighs. “So, do you think we should be worried about Skuld’s sisters?”

Steve looks across at him. “Who?”

“Skuld,” Tony repeats. When he gets more blank looks: “Crazy nutball lady who stabbed me.”

“Ah,” Steve says, eyeing Tony’s wrapped shoulder. “Why would we?”

“She said it as she was- dying, or evaporating, or whatever. She said, _sisters, I’m completing the ritual._ Then she made like the Wicked Witch of the West. Or whatever Witch melted.”

Steve follows the cracks in the ceiling with his eyes, trying to force a picture out of them. “I think Other-Us had dealings with Skuld. Or her sisters. The name sounds familiar.”

“What do you think the ritual is,” Tony asks, then answers himself: “Killing us so we’d stop experiencing universe-leakage? But in some twisted, old-god kind of way? She had that vibe.”

“Old-god vibe?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t see much of her,” Steve admits. “I saw her for about twelve seconds as I tried to knock her out.”

Tony laughs. “How’d that go.”

“ _So_ well.”

Tony laughs again, lighter than the last one. The bed shifts as he scoots up further. “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“That thing me and Nat touched- the Tesseract. It’s going to have side effects. Make the universe-leakage worse. We’re going to- remember more. Dream more, and not just of the Other Universe. Of all of them.”

Steve’s throat clicks as he swallows. “Just how many universes are there, Tony?”

A heaved breath that Steve can feel on his clavicle. “Too many. Trust me.”

 

-

 

 

_“I’m not the hero they need.”_

_“Really? You sure seem like it, what with the crest and the crown and all.”_

_“I’m not,” Steve says, and Tony looks at him. He looks- unearthly, with the sun framing him and his horse as he rides slowly beside Tony, face in hard lines as he’s lost in thought._

_“If it’s any consolation,” Tony hears himself say, “I believe you were sent by someone. To save us.”_

_That gets Steve looking at him. “You don’t believe in God.”_

_“I no longer know what I believe in,” Tony admits. “But if I believe in anything- Steve, I believe in you.”_

_Steve blinks in surprise-_

 

 

-

 

_Tony doesn’t turn around when he hears Steve approach. He doesn’t turn, either, when Steve says, “Thought I’d find you here.”_

_“Well, you found me,” Tony says, fingering the nearest book. He trails down its spine- it’s in a language he doesn’t understand, Dwarvern, maybe, perhaps he should learn that next._

_Steve’s feet scrape the stone floor as he approaches, says, “I was wondering-”_

 

-

 

_Tony tells him, “I’m not half as good as anything as I am when I do it next to you,” and means it._

_They don’t have time for this. They both know it._

_Still, Steve takes the time. His hand comes out, and Tony braces himself: hurt or heal?_

_“Tony-”_

 

-

 

Tony jolts awake from a mess of dreams of worlds he can hardly make sense of at an ungodly hour, thanks to Thor’s snoring.

At first he’s nearly thankful for the distraction.

At around 5 he lobs a pillow at him.

“Mrgh,” Thor says, lifting his head to stare in confusion and betrayal at Tony through a mane of bedhead. “Mrgh?”

“Shut. Up,” Tony hisses. Beside him, on the floor, Bruce moans in agreement.

“Mrgh,” Thor says, and his head hits the pillow again.

The snoring doesn’t start up, but Tony can’t get to sleep anyway. He doubts any of them have gotten much of it, apart from Thor.

Eventually Natasha gets up and Tony hears her brushing her teeth in the bathroom. The bathroom they have to share between six people. Jesus.

Tony slides out of bed and pads over to the bathroom just in time for Thor to start snoring again. He tenses up, but continues on into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Natasha nods at him, hops up onto the sink. She leans over, spits toothpaste into the sink and places the brush back in her mouth again. “So,” she says.

“So,” Tony replies.

“What’d you dream about?”

“Nothing I want to tell you,” Natasha says. “You?”

“The same.”

“Mm. So, Steve,” Natasha says.

Tony manages a few moments of gritted teeth before he gives in. “Nope, forget it, I changed my mind, I’m not having this conversation.”

Natasha’s at the door in an unusually quick amount of time. Before he found out she was a child assassin for Russia, he would’ve thought it was impossible to move that fast.

“Come on, Tony,” she tries. “I’m the only other one who touched the Tesseract, I’m the only one who saw it.”

Tony feels his jaw flutter. “You don’t know that.”

“No-one else would shut up about it if they saw it.”

“You have a point,” he admits after a moment. “But- I don’t want to talk about it.”

She bats her eyes at him. “What, about Steve being your soulmate?”

Tony winces. It’s a small wince, but it feels huge when it’s his shoulders doing it. “Okay, no-one technical used the word _soulmate_.”

“Yes, they did.”

“Oh, excuse me, when exactly-”

“In eight universes that we know of,” Natasha says.

Tony opens his mouth to tell her he certainly does NOT know of them, but then snippets start flashing through his mind and his mouth snaps shut.

“Well,” Tony says. “I.”

Natasha smirks. It triggers eighteen worlds’ versions of her smirking, eighteen different lives and scenarios where her lips quirk the exact same way as this, where her skin bunches in all the right places.

 _How can we all be so alike to our other selves_ , Tony wants to ask, but he’s stuck on the universe where soulmates show when you look them in the eyes for the first time. It drives the breath out of Tony’s lungs, the memory he never lived through, meeting Steve’s eyes on a crowded street and just _knowing_.

“In every universe where soulmates, tangible ones, exist, you guys were it. Everyone says it whenever you guys get married. Your friends bring it up in practically every universe, whether soulmates are a thing or not-”

“Okay,” Tony grits. “Fine, Steve’s my soulmate, whatever, shut up please.”

Natasha shrugs and starts brushing her teeth again. “Gonna have to face it one day, Tones. Don’t want to end up like all the Steves and Tonys who miss their chance.”

And god, there are so many. For every Steve and Tony who ended up happy, there’s three pairs of them who didn’t. It’s a fact that Tony would’ve been fine never knowing.

“I really liked that ‘verse where you and Steve fought kaiju, like in that movie,” Natasha starts. “Ooh, and that one where-”

“Oh my god Natasha shut up or we start talking about your weird multiverse threesome with Clint and Bucky,” Tony hisses in one breath.

Natasha’s eyebrow twitches. “There’s no threesome.”

“Oh, so we can talk about me and Steve, but anything with you and your weird threesome buddies and it’s time to stop talking?”

Natasha bites down around her toothbrush and shoves Tony out, not too roughly, but enough to make him stumble a little when his feet leave the bathroom tiles.

“There’s no threesome,” she says. “Now go away, I’m brushing my teeth.”

She closes the door in his face.

“Rude,” he calls.

Thor snores.

 

 

Bruce re-dresses Tony’s shoulder and Tony pops more painkillers as everyone starts getting up. By the time Clint finally rolls out of bed- literally- people are more or less dressed and sitting around on the beds.

“So,” Bruce says.

“Plan,” Thor nods.

Steve says, “Right.” Then: “Hey, what are we actually trying to do here?”

That gets a small round of silence, only broken by Clint saying, “Not… get killed? And hopefully fix all that universe leakage that’s going on?”

“Okay,” Steve says, considering. “But there’s- no reasonable way that we can DO that.”

“Apart from dying,” Clint adds. “And hey, let’s not do that.”

“Right,” Steve says. “No way we can do that, except for dying.”

Tony cocks his head at him. “Says who?”

“Says-” Steve rolls his shoulders. “You guys remember Other Us, that time they had to deal with another universe having leakage? The people inside that universe, they couldn’t help. They had to come into our- Other Us’s universe to fix their own. They couldn’t help from the inside.”

“So we’re fucked,” Tony says. “Unless we fix our universe from someone else’s.”

“Pretty much,” Steve sighs. He scrubs a hand down over his face, then lets it rest in his lap. His hands, at least, don’t make him feel alien in his own body. Even with the serum, his hands stayed the same in most universes. “Which isn’t an option, from what we know. Yet, at least. So, we- we contact SHIELD, see if they can help us out. And we try to arm ourselves against whatever might come and put us down. Which is- also not really an option, if we’re honest.”

“So…”

“So,” Steve says. He huffs out a breath. “Senior year starts next week.”

“School,” Natasha says dryly. “School’s your plan?”

Steve shrugs and tries to shove away the feeling of his shoulders feeling too light, too skinny, his bones too brittle. “First rule of running, right? Don’t run, walk?”

It makes her lips jump upwards. He knows the words echo in a familiar way in her mind, too: walking through a mall with hoodies tugged down low over their faces, Steve tensing up before Natasha diverts him, tells him to laugh, to put his arm around her and tug her close.

“Hide in the open,” she says. Her head cocks. “I’ve heard worse ideas.”

“Wait, okay, no,” Clint says flatly. “So we don’t know what, who, or when something’s gonna try to kill us, and instead of heading for Vegas, we’re going to go to public school?”

“For once, I’m with Clint on this,” Tony says. “I, for one, don’t want to spend my last days in that hellhole.”

“You got a better idea, Tony?”

Tony’s mouth moves wordlessly. “Vegas,” he tries, and high-fives Clint half-heartedly when Clint holds his hand out. “Or we can find out what SHIELD’s deal is, and if they could actually help and not hinder us in this.”

“Of course we’re going to do that,” Steve says. “We can do that and still go to school at the same time.”

Tony sighs. “Ugh. Really?”

“You can go Vegas-ing if you want,” Steve offers, and grins when Tony narrows his eyes at him. “What?”

“Like I’d leave you guys out on your asses,” Tony says. “None of you’d last a day without me.”

Clint reaches over, links an arm around Tony’s waist and ignores Tony when he glares. “Yeah, he’s our Hermionie!”

“Let go of me, Barton, you’re rubbing coffee grounds all over my shirt. How did you even get them on your forehead?”

Steve smiles as he watches them bicker, and only realizes he’s thinking of them as his team when he’s halfway through the next thought.

 _My team_ , Steve thinks again. They aren’t the Avengers, not anything close, but- it fits. They were already a team before all this came down on them, anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

“Hey, Ma.”

“Steve,” she says, and Steve can hear the PA over her end of the line, can hear the usual bustle of the hospital that means his mother’s either managed to get a break or has found time to answer her son’s call during a shift. Either is a miracle.

“Mob given up on chasing you yet?”

“Ma, I told you, it’s not the mob. I don’t know anything about the mob.”

“Mm.”

“I don’t!”

“ _Mm_.”

“Ma.”

“How’s Tony’s shoulder?”

Steve looks over towards Tony, who’s lying off the end of a bed, flicking through his phone. The bandages they picked up from the pharmacy aren’t as good as the ones Sarah sent them off with, but they’re doing their job. “Good. He’s healing.”

“You gonna clue me in on who stabbed him? And why it was with that- that medieval knife that looks like it costs more than our apartment?”

“I’ll… tell you in person. When we get back.”

“Uh-huh. And when’s that gonna be?” Someone on her end of the line says, “Nurse Rogers,” and Steve hears her take her mouth away from the receiver, say, “One sec, I’m talking to Steve.”

“We’ll be back before school starts,” Steve tells her.

“You better,” she says. “And make it sooner rather than later, ‘cause the longer you’re gone, the crazier my theories get. I’m onto government conspiracies, Steve.”

“Bye, Ma.”

“Bye, Steve. And take care of each other, yeah?”

“Of course.” Steve hangs up, and is in the middle of pocketing the phone when Clint nudges him in the hip with his foot.

“We actually going to tell her? Like, the truth?”

“Thinking about it,” Steve admits. “It’d make whatever’s coming easier. Something tells me I’m going to be stressed enough without lying to Ma.”

“True. So what’re we telling her?”

Steve’s mouth moves wordlessly for a moment. “I’ll get back to you when I come up with something that doesn’t sound crazy.”

“So the truth’s fucked.”

“We _can_ tell her the truth, we just- have to prove it.”

“Right. And how are we doing that?”

“No clue.”

Clint heaves a sigh, falls bodily onto the bedspread. “Great.”

 

 

 

 

The drive back home is punctured with just as much singing as the drive to the motel, although this time, thankfully, only part of it is ‘Star Spangled Man With A Plan.’

The rest of it starts off when Steve tells them to sing something else and Clint starts, “100 bottles of,” and then cuts his thumb on the lemonade can he had been systematically ripping apart. “Fuck.”

‘100 bottles of Fuck’ lasts several hours and re-starts until Steve loses count.

 

 

 

 

When they hit the city limits, Bruce clears his throat.

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

Bruce keeps his eye on the skyline. “Could I stay at yours for a while?”

“’Course,” Steve says before the thought has fully processed. Then, when it starts winding its way through his mind properly: “You know how long you’re gonna be staying?”

He eyes Bruce in the rear-view mirror and isn’t surprised to see Bruce lock-jawed and staring down at his hands. Now that he thinks about it, Steve’s surprised the subject hasn’t come up sooner. It’s not like they’re going to drop him off outside of his house for his dad to continue beating the shit out of him.

Steve’s surprised they made it this long without telling Bruce there’s no way in hell he’s going back to that house.

“I- no.”

“Fair enough. That’s fine,” Steve says. He clears his throat. “Tony?”

When he doesn’t get a response, he checks the rear-view mirror. Tony’s dozing, or zoning out, or something like it. And usually Steve wouldn’t interrupt him, since Tony doesn’t get enough sleep as it is, but- “Tony.”

Tony startles, cheek smearing against the glass of the window as he straightens. “Yeah, what.”

“Things seemed dicey at yours when we left it. Do you wanna stay over at mine for a while, ‘til Howard’s cooled down?”

Tony blinks, squints a little. Steve can’t tell if it’s him biding his time or re-adjusting to the light. “Uh,” Tony says. “Yeah. Sure. Thanks.”

“No problem.” Steve makes a note to text his Ma about Bruce and Tony before he gets home. “Anyone else need to crash at my place?”

They’ve been on the road for a while, so Steve isn’t surprised when the rest of them make noises instead of actual words. 

“Well, let me know if that changes,” Steve says. Coming up to a red light, he glances back at Clint, who seems the least sure about his decision.

Steve makes eye contact with Natasha, flicks his gaze quickly towards Clint, then back at her: _keep an eye on him._

Natasha nods, almost imperceptible, and Steve turns back to the road. It’s got him thinking about the Avengers again- even if they aren’t the superheroes they were supposed to be, they’re still a team.

 

 

 

Sarah is still at work when Steve gets to the apartment, so he starts up a batch of noodles for three and lets it simmer before going back out into the lounge.

It’s where they spend most of their time, now that Steve thinks about it: it’s not much, small and cramped with peeling wallpaper, but it has a TV and it has a big couch and it connects to the kitchen. For a bunch of teenagers with low standards, it’s enough.

It’s even enough for Tony, who has considerably higher standards, but somehow has never brought it up once- the budget food, how sometimes the power gets cut off, how the heating isn’t on in winter occasionally because they didn’t have enough for the bill that month. No matter how Steve’s poverty comes into light, Tony shuts up about it.

Well, he mostly does.

“You know, I could just- buy you a house,” Tony drawls as Bruce falls face-first onto the couch. “What’s the point of having Tony Stark as a best friend if you don’t take advantage of my money?”

Steve bites off a sigh, comes to sit in the chair next to him with the holes from where everyone’s started picking stuffing out of it. “Shockingly, we enjoy your company. God knows why.”

“How dare you,” Tony says. It’s muffled, his arm is slung over his face as he sits over Bruce’s legs and leans back against the wall. “Hey, is it just me or is the couch lumpier than usual.”

Bruce tries half-heartedly to kick Tony from where Tony is sitting across his legs. It partly works, and Tony swats Bruce’s lower back until he settles down.

Bruce turns his face so it’s squished against the couch, gaze in Steve’s direction. “Steve. ’S Clint okay?”

“Should be. I’ve got Nat keeping an eye on him. She’ll read him if something happens with his foster parents.” Steve stops himself when he realizes he’s been picking idly at the spots of stuffing coming out of his chair. He tries to push it back in, but it’s useless and he gives up after a few seconds. “I’ll go get blankets.”

Since middle school, Steve has had extra blankets crammed in the back of his closet for when his friends come over. Before that, there was just Bucky, not much need for extra blankets, but after he met the rest of them-

Hands full of threadbare blankets, Steve pauses, remembering. He always thought it was strange, something that only happened to people in movies, but he never put much stock into that thought, preferred to tell the story as dramatically as he could:

Steve- eleven, even scrawnier than he is now- had been walking down the street, hands in his pockets, minding his own business when he heard the familiar sounds of a scuffle. Growing up in the lower-class of Brooklyn made it so that Steve could always recognize a scuffle when he heard it.

He hadn’t thought twice when he went charging down the alleyway, fists bunched and chest wheezing already after only a couple seconds of sprinting. He hadn’t gone far when he made it to the kid- Clint, though he hadn’t known that then- cupping a bloody nose in front of a guy at least twice Steve’s size.

Clint had been wobbling but grinning, teeth bared up at the guy as he took another punch. His eye was swelling, his smile faltering when he spotted Steve down the alley.

“Hey,” Steve had said. Then, after clearing his throat of phlegm that had stuck around after his monthly cold: “HEY.”

The guy had turned, almost laughing when he saw Steve. “Beat it, kid.”

“Nah,” Steve had said, squeaky and skinny as anything. “What’d he ever do to you, huh?”

“None of your business,” the guy had answered after a second, like he was confused as to why Steve was still bothering to stand there. “Look, why don’t you just-”

“L-let him go.”

The voice had come from behind them, and Steve had turned to see a kid he’d later learn to be Tony Stark, heir to Stark Industries, child genius and resident Manhattan rich kid.

In that moment, though, all Steve had seen was a kid just as short as he was, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with knobbed knees and clothes too neat to be a regular around this part of town.

“You serious,” the guy with his hand around Clint’s throat had said, just in time for Clint to twist out of his grasp and bite him hard in the fleshy bit of his palm.

The guy had yelped, and in the next twenty seconds several things happened very quickly:

Steve had lunged forwards, attempting to tackle the guy around the knees and getting kicked in the head for his trouble.

Tony had started picking up rocks from the street and lobbing them in the direction of the guy’s head, hitting him more often than not.

Clint had ducked out of the way of the guy’s punch and kicked him in the shin, almost getting away before the guy’s hand clamped around his shoulder and dragged him back.

Now, Steve thinks it’s something like destiny, but back then he had just thought it was good luck when Thor had shown up, hollering and brawny and leaping on the guy’s back to wrap his arm around his neck.

Good luck that Bruce had come cowering out of the back door of a diner lining the alleyway to ask what all the noise was about and then trip the guy when he got too close.

Good luck that Natasha had emerged out of the laundromat opposite them to march through them all and strike the guy in the middle of his forehead, knocking him out cold and making them all fall silent and shuffle out of the way as the guy slumped over onto the concrete.

Steve doesn’t remember much about the immediate events of afterwards, probably thanks to the concussion dealt out from the guy’s boot. He remembers Thor booming at Natasha that she seemed skilled, remembers Bruce smiling nervously when someone complimented him on having the smarts to trip the guy when he had the chance, remembers Natasha’s small grin and Tony’s nervous blush and Clint’s confused, bleeding smile.

Mostly, he remembers vomiting and his newfound friends half-carrying him to the hospital where he got diagnosed with a serious concussion and had his Ma fret over him for the next day or so.

Up until a few days ago, Steve had thought it was all luck of the draw, all of them being there at the same time. Now he isn’t so sure.

Was it destiny, or something like it? Something big and elaborate that Steve doesn’t understand? God knows there’s enough Steve doesn’t understand now, let alone all the big and elaborate things that plague him in echoes of the multiverse, tripping across the corners of his mind.

His hand clenches on the cupboard door when there’s a knock: “Steve, did you die in there or something?”

It’s Tony. Tony, sixteen and tired and familiar, the Tony that Steve has known for years, the one that was born and will most likely die in this universe.

_No use thinking about all that,_ Steve tells himself. He loads more blankets into his arms.

This, he can do. He can carry these out to the lounge, can arrange them on the couch and the floor like he’s used to doing. He can finish off the noodles and bring them out and they can eat out of bowls while sitting crosslegged on the floor like always.

It can be how it always is, and once Steve would’ve found this comforting. Now it makes him uneasy. How long are they going to have this before it’s torn away from them, replaced by everything that always comes with the multiverse problem?

_Blankets_ , Steve reminds himself _. Then noodles. Deal with everything else later._

He’s falling asleep, full and vaguely warm when his phone starts vibrating against his hip. He startles and digs it out of his pocket to see the name _Bucky_ across his screen.

Bruce looks over at him questioningly. He’s on the couch, the only one paying attention to the movie on screen. Tony’s snoring quietly on the chair to their right.

“I gotta take this,” Steve says, and Bruce nods at him as Steve rises from the couch and goes into the hall. “Hey, B-”

“The hell did you guys do?”

Steve sighs. “Hi, Steve, wow, it’s nice to hear from you, too.”

“Hi, Steve,” Bucky says impatiently, then continues: “Nat’s all weird.”

“Nat’s always weird.”

“True. But now she’s being- mega weird.”

“Did you just say _mega_?”

“Steve.”

“What, I’m just saying, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say-”

“What’d you guys do?”

Steve sags against the wall. He tries the words out in his mouth, tries re-shaping them into something that makes sense and comes up with nothing. Instead, he says, “We went on a road trip.”

“No shit,” Bucky says. “That’s all she’s telling me, too.”

“It’s the truth.”

“I don’t doubt it. What else’d you do, though?”

“…Road trip things?”

“Steve.”

“Bucky.”

“You’ve been weird, too.”

“I’m a weird fella.”

“No shit,” Bucky repeats. He lets out a breath; it comes out tinny over the phone. “Just. Okay. If you tell me nothing happened, I’ll believe you. Well, I won’t, but I’ll believe it’s nothing I should stress over.”

“Bullshit.”

“Fine, I’m gonna stress about it,” Bucky snaps. “Just tell me I shouldn’t, and I’ll stress about it less.”

“It’s nothing you should stress about, Buck.”

“Great. That really sets my mind at ease.”

“Sure it does.”

“Hey, I’m taking what I can get,” Bucky sighs. He pauses. “Hey, Steve.”

“Hiya, Buck.”

“You guys taking care of each other? Like always?”

“You know we are.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

The guilt is expected, but it still twists at him, churning in his gut. After all, this is _Bucky_ , the other side of Steve’s coin in most universes, the one who Steve is most intricately linked except for-

Except for-

_No use thinking about that_ , Steve tells himself, jaw tightening. He makes himself breathe in and out, hard, steely breaths through clenched teeth.

“You’ll tell me if something’s going on,” Bucky asks.

“’Course,” Steve says, and doesn’t even know if he’s lying. _Of course_.

Even from Bucky’s breathing, Steve can tell he’s sceptical.

_There’s another world, very close to ours,_ Steve wants to tell him. _We join the army and follow each other past the point of stupidity. Save each other  so many times we lose track. Then I don’t save you in time and we both lose 70 years. It’s so much, Buck, I don’t know how to handle this. There’s a whole other life in my head. There are_ lives _, but there’s one that’s the clearest, and it’s not this one, and in it, I don’t know if you’re okay and I need you to be okay._

“I need you to be okay.”

It’s out before he can push it down. Maybe he means it as an apology- because Bucky’s gonna be mad at him later, when he eventually finds out what Steve’s keeping from him. Because Steve’s going to keep it from him, of course he is, he’s going to keep Bucky out of the way because if he doesn’t then Bucky will force his way into the front lines like he always does.

An apology, because Bucky’s going to yell and Steve’s going to reason with him: _I needed you to be okay, and if being okay meant lying to you for a while, then I’ll always take that._

Bucky huffs. Says, “Well, fuck. Back at you, Rogers.”

Steve’s always hated it in movies when someone- usually an old man- says something along the lines of, “Big storm’s headed our way,” but when he hangs up and leans his head against the wall and feels both too big and too small in his skin, it’s the only thing that feels real: _big storm’s headed our way._

Steve doesn’t know what it is, or how they’re going to handle it. Or, god, if they even _can_ : they’re sixteen and not qualified for any kind of fighting, let alone the kind that’s coming for them. Because it will be coming for them, like it always does. Steve just hopes they have time to prepare, not that he knows how they’ll be preparing. Right now they have one lead and it’s SHIELD, and he doubts they’re going to know much more than them.

Hell, after Tony and Nat touched the Tesseract, he guesses they know more than SHIELD right now.

It’s not a comforting thought.

He’s jolted out of his thoughts when he hears the front door snick shut. He heads out to the lounge, says in a whisper, “Hey, Ma,” because Tony and Bruce are asleep by now, curled up on the couch and the chair.

Sarah nods at him from where she’s giving Tony’s shoulder a once-over without touching him. “He should get this checked out at a hospital. You did say you’d do that. And don’t tell me you did, because I recognize my stitching, and that’s definitely my stitching.”

“We- can’t be sure who to trust,” Steve admits.

Sarah straightens, crosses her arms at him. “What the hell did you guys get into that made it so you don’t know if it’s safe in a _hospital_? Who’d you piss off?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Uncomplicate it for me.”

“It sounds more than a little insane, Ma.”

“Try me.”

“I don’t want to tell you without some kind of proof,” Steve says.

“What, or I might check you into a loony bin?”

“Yeah.”

She sighs, cocking her head. In this light, Steve is struck by the lines in her face, the perma-bags under her eyes that always follow her home after working a double.

Steve tries to remember how old he was when she died in the Other World. Nineteen, twenty years old, maybe.

They have a few years before that. And Steve’s pretty sure that no-one gets TB anymore.

“You’re asking me to put an awful lot of trust in you,” she says, voice lowering when Bruce shifts in his sleep.

Steve squares his shoulders. “I am. And I swear, I’ll explain things as soon as I can.”

“Or you could explain now.”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me,” she says for the second time. It’s more exasperated than the last one.

Steve glances over towards Bruce and Tony, sweeps his gaze over their lounge, the dim light of the kitchen glowing off to their right. Then, looking his mother in the eyes, he says, “We keep getting glimpses of other universes, one in particular, ‘cause it’s closest, and no-one knows why but it’s causing damage to the fabric of realities. Other realities. And the conclusion that everyone seems to be getting is that if we die then there’s no one left to receive glimpses of other universes, so a lot of people from other worlds are going to try to kill us to stop the damage and we don’t know who or when. Or how to fix things.”

 There’s a moment when the only sound is the deep sounds of his friends sleeping. Steve waits, squiring under his mother’s gaze until she nods briskly and says, “Okay.”

“…Okay?”

“You’re right. It does sound insane.”

“I did warn you.” Steve wets his lips. “So.”

“You’ve never lied to me before.”

“Eh.”

“You’ve never lied to me about important things before,” she amends. She heaves a breath. “I’m going to be honest with you, I haven’t slept in so long I’m starting to see things. How’s about you explain all that again to me in the morning?”

“It’s gonna sound just as insane then.”

“I believe that,” she sighs. She leans in to press a kiss to his forehead, and Steve closes his eyes at the touch of her warm hand on his forehead. “Go to sleep.”

“Back at you.”

She smiles, pats his cheek. Steve watches her climb the stairs to her bedroom and remembers another life where he held her hand as she died coughing blood.

He stands in the dark lounge for a long time, remembering the feel of her hand cooling in his.


	6. Chapter 6

Tony never thought about it much, but when he did, he decided that having a big secret would make class less boring. That he could walk around with this quiet, glowing knowledge and nothing could touch him, not really, because he had this big secret.

It doesn’t make class less boring, but Tony supposes that’s because he covered all of this when he was eleven. He could do these equations in his _sleep_. He’s woken up with barely-legible doodles on his arms drawn in a drunken stupor that were more advanced than what’s on the board right now.

“Stark.”

Tony grins into his arms, but makes sure his expression is blank when he raises his face from where he had been slumping over, face buried in the crooks of his arms. “Yes, dear?”

Even people who hadn’t been listening tune in for this, though they all know how it goes. They regard Tony with either amusement, jealousy or scorn, depending on the day and the person.

The teacher taps the board. His face is smug- Tony has lost count of how many times they’ve done their little routine, and it’s never ended any other way. Tony thinks it’s cute that the teacher thinks it’ll ever go another way.

“X is 43.2,” Tony answers after a scant second, and the teacher’s smile ticks and fades.

“Right,” he says, jaw flexing. “That’s. That’s great.” He takes a bracing breath, turns back to the board.

Tony lets his twitching mouth slide back into a grin again. That never gets old.

From the other side of the room, Clint catches his gaze and rolls his eyes pointedly.

 _Jealous_ , Tony mouths.

Clint flips him off and Tony rests his face in his arms again, still grinning.

 

-

 

_For a while they just stare at each other. Then Steve clears his throat, eyeing the stacks of grain in Tony’s arms. “You’re bringing us food?”_

_Tony shrugs stiffly._

_“Why?”_

_“Somehow, the idea of kids starving and getting the shit kicked out of them when they try to steal food wasn’t appealing to me.”_

_Steve keeps staring at the grain, then at Tony._

_“Look,” Tony snaps. He re-adjusts the bags in his arms, tries not to wince when it sets off another ache. These things are heavy, and he’s been unloading them for a while. “You can’t tell anyone.”_

_That earns him a laugh, loud and barked. “I’m aware of the consequences, Stark. Are you?”_

_“I’ve- been learning,” Tony admits. “Things are different in the lower Districts.”_

_“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Steve mutters, and his gaze goes from Tony to Bruce as he catches him walking out to the back of the van._

_Bruce startles when he sees Steve, but not as much as Tony thought he would’ve. He watches as Bruce gives Steve a wary nod. “Steve. Are you helping?”_

_Steve glances towards Tony. He shrugs, the grain lifting with his shoulders. Fuck, he’s going to need a massage when he gets back. He makes a note to schedule one in._

_“’Course,” Steve says, and starts forwards to take a bag of grain out of his arms-_

 

-

 

Tony jolts awake as the bell rings, a loud, “AHHH,” forcing out of him as he straightens in his chair.

It gets him a fair amount of stares, including Clint, who sidles over to him as the rest of the class begins filtering out into the halls.

“You good?”

Tony blinks once, twice, as he reassures himself of the fact of the desk under his hands, the linoleum under his feet, the stale air of the air conditioning and the knowledge that this is his world and he definitely doesn’t live in a dystopian wasteland.

“Fell asleep,” he says shortly.

“We’ve all been there,” Clint says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Hey, some more than most. Did you-” he waggles his fingers in front of Tony’s head. “See places?”

“Just one,” Tony says, getting up slowly: floor still under his feet, sixteen-year-old body with all its usual joints and hormones, bag still a familiar weight as he slings it over his shoulder. He’s here, it this world, _his_ world. “It’s- it was vivid. They keep getting more vivid. Have they been doing that for you, or is it a touching-the-Tesseract thing?”

Clint snorts. “Fuck, I dunno. I’m hoping it’s a Tesseract thing, though. Last thing I want is those dreams feeling more real. They feel real enough already.” He spots Natasha, jogs the next few steps to catch up, then slings his arm over her shoulder.

“Hey, Tasha, your dreams been getting worse?”

When they both shoot him a look, Clint shrugs. “What? We’re a bunch of dumbass high-schoolers talking about bad dreams. What do you think is gonna happen?”

Natasha elbows him in the stomach. He _oof_ s and retracts his arm.

“Don’t jinx it,” she tells him.

“Gotcha,” Clint wheezes, rubbing his ribs. “No jinxing.”

Tony asks, “Have they?”

Natasha looks over at him. “Have yours?”

Tony tries to look non-committal as he makes a face. There are times, too often, when he has to convince himself this is reality.

“A little,” he allows.

“Mine too,” she says, meeting his eyes. “A little.”

Her chin tips sideways in a gesture that Tony recognizes in far too many versions of her. She smiles. In every- well, not _every_ , there are no constants in the multiverse- but in many worlds, Natasha’s knowing smile is exactly the same as the one his Natasha wears.

Tony looks away when his phone vibrates in his pocket: it’s a text from Rhodey.

_Srsly whats been goin on w/ u_

He exits out of the message without a reply.

 

 

As seniors, they’re now allowed off grounds at lunch. So far, they’ve been taking every opportunity to, even if it’s just to head to McDonalds.

They’re heading to Bessie when Bruce stops so suddenly that Clint has to bank right so he doesn’t walk into him.

“The fuck, Banner?”

Bruce doesn’t answer, too busy staring at the mousey brunette wrestling an armful of textbooks into a van. “Hey, who was Thor’s wife, girlfriend, something, in the Other World- the Foster woman?”

Thor, Natasha and Tony all answer, “Jane,” at the same time that Steve says, “Oh, shit,” having followed Bruce’s gaze.

When Bruce points, the others all turn in that direction.

“Oh,” Natasha says.

Thor makes a low rumble in the back of his throat, his lips parting. He stares, and then continues to stare as Clint starts hitting him hard in the shoulder.

“What are you waiting for, man? Go introduce yourself!”

“Right,” Thor croaks. He doesn’t move. Clint keeps slapping his shoulder.

Steve gives Clint a look to quit it, and then moves to take his place, squeezing Thor’s shoulder instead of hitting it. “Hey, buddy?”

“Yes.” Thor blinks for the first time since he saw Jane from across the parking lot. His throat clicks against a swallow.

“You good?”

“I am fine,” Thor says, sounding uncertain. Then, just as uncertainly: “I. Am unsure whether to talk to her. We are both much younger than we met in the Other World, we are different people, and I am- I am not a demigod. When we met, we mostly bonded over my knowledge of the dimensions. We do not have that luxury here, what if- what if I bore her?”

“Thor. Buddy. That’s- sorry, but that’s the biggest pile of dog shit I’ve ever heard. You’re the least boring people I’ve ever met.”

Tony mock-gasps and Steve turns his head to spare him an eyeroll before turning back to Thor. “ _One_ of the least boring people I’ve ever met. I’m sure Jane will like you, your age and your mortal-ness aside.”

“Yeah, quit being insecure, you big weirdo,” Clint says. “It’s offputting. Like seeing an unhappy puppy.”

“He does kind of look like one right now,” Natasha remarks.

“What?”

“An unhappy puppy.”

“Oh.” Clint tilts his head at Thor, then grins. “Hey, he totally does.”

“Stop helping,” Steve sighs. He watches Jane as she crosses the parking lot again, goes into the school building. “Look, she goes here. She probably transferred at the start of the year. If you don’t talk to her now, you can do it later. Even if you don’t talk to her the whole school year- well, apparently destiny is a thing with us. I’m guessing it’d bring you and Jane back together eventually.”

He’s been going back and forth with the whole destiny thing- it bothers him, but it’s also oddly comforting. They’re layered on top of each other, startling and warm and concerning, muddling Steve’s brain into knots. But he doesn’t think Thor needs to hear that right now, so he continues gripping Thor’s shoulder until Thor blows out a breath, eyes tracking Jane as she comes back across the parking lot and gets into her car.

“I- think I shall wait. ‘Til later.”

“Fair ‘nuff,” Steve tells him. He gives Thor’s shoulder one last squeeze, then drops his hand. “Okay, now that’s over: we still heading to McDonalds?”

“Yeah, but someone’s gonna have to pay for mine,” Clint says as they set off.

“Dibs not,” the rest of them chime, leaving Bruce sighing, a second too late to put his thumb to his forehead.

Steve trades a look with Natasha before asking, “Hey, Clint.”

“O Captain my Captain?”

“How’d your foster parents take the surprise road trip?”

Clint shrugs, hands in his pockets. “Ehh, I’ve had worse. They just yelled a bit, it’s fine,” he adds when he catches everyone look pointedly at him or each other. “Nothing happened.”

“We’ve heard that before,” Natasha says slowly, the only one to get away with mentioning it in a casual conversation without getting the silent treatment from Clint for a few days.

Clint’s shoulders go tight. “It’s fine.”

“You don’t have the best track record with foster parents, Clint-”

“Gee, thanks for the reminder, I really needed-”

Clint’s snapping gets cut off when Thor moves to shove him forwards. Clint is turning around to yell some variation of, “What the FUCK,” when Thor, in the spot Clint was recently occupying, proceeds to go flying into the asphalt of the parking lot thanks to Jane’s van backing into him.

“…Huh,” Clint says instead.

The van’s front door is thrown open and Jane Foster, wide-eyed and younger than any of them remember her, comes stumbling out. She blanches when she catches sight of Thor, who is groaning lowly on the ground.

“Ohhhh my god,” she blurts, running to Thor and crouching down beside him. Her hands hover over his chest, his neck, his head. “Are you okay? Are you concussed? Sometimes people get concussed but they can’t tell and they go about their day and really bad shit happens, like they try to operate machinery and accidentally kill a bunch of people. Do you feel woozy? Nauseas? Do you… do…”

She trails off when Thor opens his eyes and stares at her, faintly surprised, but mostly awed.

Jane looks pretty awed herself, jaw going slack before she coughs, sits up, looks around at the others. “I didn’t hit any of you guys, did I?”

“Nah,” Natasha says. “Just him.”

“Good,” Jane sighs. Her hands continue to dart around Thor’s head, ghosting over it but not touching. “Um. Could you tell me your name?”

“I am Thor,” Thor says, and a smile starts working its way up his face, the big one that crinkles his entire face. “You are _lovely_.”

Jane’s eyebrows hit her hairline as she blushes, hands coming up to push her hair behind her ears. “Okay, even if you’re not concussed, you’re something.”

“He’s fine,” Tony tells her. “Thor’s always like this.”

“Really?” Jane leans back from her crouch. “That’s- okay, then. Uh, do you feel okay, Thor?”

“I am well.” Thor’s grin is making everyone else fight against their own twitching smiles. “I am the best I have been in many, many days.”

Jane has to avert her eyes to blush again, words half-forming and dying on her lips. Whenever she makes eye contact with him, Thor’s face makes her blush harder. “I-? Okay? I really think you should go to the nurse, I’ll take you-”

She gets to her feet, helping Thor up before she pauses. She looks at the others, smiling awkwardly. “Uh, where’s the nurse’s office? I’m kind of new here.”

Thor keeps beaming like an idiot as he says, “I will show you!”

“…Okay,” Jane says, and stifles an incredulous giggle when Thor keeps looking at her like she just agreed to marry him rather than hit him with her car. Then, to the rest of them: “Are you guys coming? I don’t know if I’d trust my friend with the person who just ran them over.”

“Eh, he didn’t get run over, you just tapped him,” Clint says. “Thor’s had worse. We were going to McDonalds anyway, and none of us can bother putting up with-” he waves at Thor’s sunshine expression, “-that for long. Besides, you look very trustworthy. I’m sure he’ll walk off a cliff if you lead him off it.”

“That’s… nice,” Jane says, trailing off into a questioning tone on the end of it. “Um. Okay, Thor, nurse’s office?”

“Yes,” he agrees.

“Right, good.” Jane starts walking with him, and then stops, whirls around. “Oh! I’m Jane, by the way. I’m really sorry for hitting your friend with my car. I’m really sorry for hitting you,” she adds, to Thor this time.

“He really doesn’t mind,” Steve says.

Jane spares another look towards Thor and blushes again when she sees he’s still smiling like a goon. “I, um, yeah.”

Steve thinks he hears Thor start asking Jane where she transferred from before they get out of earshot.

“Well,” Bruce says. “I hope we’re all more subtle than that when we meet our people.”

Natasha pops her gum, looks over at him. “Our people?”

“You know,” Bruce says. He adjusts his glasses in that way he does when he needs something to do with his hands. “Our people.”

There’s a murmur of agreement that goes around the group, and Steve thinks about them all, and their people, the ones they haven’t met yet: Bruce and Betty, Tony and Pepper, Clint and Bobbi.

Steve looked Peggy Carter up on Google a few days ago, and he isn’t sure if he was relieved or not when he didn’t find the right one. It’s strange, a shadow-version of himself being in love with someone he hasn’t met yet.

It’s difficult, the memories- they shift, and sometimes Steve remembers being skinny and making a fool out of himself in a taxi with Peggy pursing her lips down at him, and sometimes he remembers her dragging him down for their first and last kiss.

Some memories are clearer than others, stronger, harder for Steve to make the distinction between his memories and the Other Steve’s- curling up over a grenade. Pain lighting up his bones, singing in his blood as the serum got its hooks into him.

Peggy’s hot mouth on his, her fingers locked around his tie.

The ice- god. Steve doesn’t want to think about the ice, he gets shivers if he concentrates too hard on it, and he wakes up shaking too often nowadays.

He remembers clasping Peggy’s hand, her wrinkled hand, and choking back tears as he forced a smile. He remembers words he never said, thinking things he’s never thought.

And after Peggy, he knows, comes Tony, always Tony. He really doesn’t like thinking about that, because it’s one thing to remember a woman he doesn’t know and another to dredge up not-memories of a version of one of your best friends.

Still, Steve does it from time to time, when his mind drifts or he can’t hold it back anymore. He’s wanted his Tony for so long, it’s a relief to at least have some version of him, somewhere- to have the memory, even if it isn’t his, of his hands on Tony’s waist, his tongue in Tony’s mouth, his fingers tracing lines in Tony’s lined face-

It’s better when he remembers things like that, because it jolts him out of it. That Tony isn’t his Tony, and the person touching Tony’s face isn’t him, it’s Other Steve, who’s bigger and better and older and someone Tony- at least, a version of Tony- would actually get into a relationship with.

Yeah, that usually gets Steve thinking about something else in no time.

“Steve.”

“Mm?” Steve looks over to see Clint looking at him expectantly.

“We still going to McDonalds?”

“What? Yeah.” Steve shakes his head to clear it as they head over to Bessie. He’s already in the car when he realizes and groans. “Shit. Forgot my bag.”

“So?”

“So my bag has my keys in it,” Steve says. He opens Bessie’s door, giving her a distracted pat when she creaks in protest. “Be back in a second.”

He goes through his schedule in his head, then his morning- he definitely had his bag in his last class, so he heads to the labs. When he gets there, he starts bending to peek under the desks he thinks he might’ve sat at. Under the third desk, he spots his bag.

He’s hefting it over his shoulder when he hears, “Cap. Gosh, those photos weren’t exaggerating, you _are_ small.”

Steve whirls around.

Sitting on the teacher’s desk is Natasha Romanoff. Not his Natasha, but definitely _a_ Natasha- there’s a scar sitting over her left eyebrow, she’s greying at the roots and holding a very small gun.

It’s pointed at his head.

“Hello,” she says. “Where’s the rest of them?”

**Author's Note:**

> find me [here](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
